The first habanero pepper sprout was planted by Uwizeyimana Herman in his five-hectare plot in the town of Gashora, an hour’s drive from the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, in Dec.
The 36-year-old had put up a sign reading “Africa Hema Village” in Chinese , English and Kinyarwanda’s native language.
His first harvest is set to begin this month. The basic processing of the habaneros will take place in a local factory, and then they’ll be flown to China.
They will be turned into bottled sauces a week later that will hit Alibaba ‘s online-to-offline supermarket chain Hema Xiansheng shelves.
A new series of chili sauces called Huoshan Lieren, or Volcanic Hunter, entered the market before Spring Festival and quickly became popular among Lunar New Year shoppers.
“The sauce is super, super hot, and it can pair with everything from noodles to Peking duck,” commented a netizen who bought the product.
Hema Xiansheng ordered more than sixty metric tons of Rwandan habaneros. The purchases provided a living for flood-dealing Rwandan villagers and the COVID-19 pandemic.
From 2011 to 2018 Herman studied in China, earning his Master’s degree and a PhD in environmental sciences. He and his wife Yang Hong, who is from China, returned to Rwanda in 2018 and started their own business.
In January 2019, Hema Xiansheng CEO Hou Yi visited Rwanda to find quality products to be brought onto the Chinese market. Among his discoveries were Habaneros.
Herman and Yang helped Hou ‘s team organize from analysis to field trips, and from evaluating manufacturing processes to logistics determination.
They also supported the purchasing manager of Hema Xiansheng, Chen Huifang, when she led a team of eight to visit Rwanda in September to explore the possibilities for producing habanero products that would match Chinese preferences.
Yang remembers her first attempt at the nearby habanero sauce. She says she put a small amount of the sauce in a rice bowl, and the rice felt “so spicy”
“Its spiciness is different from any pepper I’ve eaten in China. And it has a special fruity fragrance,” Yang said.
The couple took Chen’s team to see the plantation.
“We wore rubber gloves when we touched them. Our fingers still felt hot the next day,” Chen recalled.
Their research and development team spent 4 days researching the peppers and cooking them.
It proved difficult to move habaneros into China. The fresh peppers cannot be imported into China, so before shipment, Chen ‘s team decided to carry out basic processing in Rwanda.
Processing requires a painstaking balance. That too much salt is going to ruin the taste. Too little, and it may rot the peppers.
“Because Rwanda has a strict ban on plastics, we had to find proper containers to carry the pepper sauce. The biodegradable material we initially used couldn’t withstand the long flights,” Chen said.
Due to the pandemic, direct flights from Rwanda to China were also suspended and the logistics costs were increasing.
All the problems have been addressed one by one, and Chen is pleased to see that the habanero sauce has sold well at offline and online stores in Hema.
“One reason sales have been good is that people stayed home and cooked more during the epidemic. We’re glad to see repurchases are high,” she said.
Her team is also working on more habanero products, such as seasoning packages for crayfish and a special filling for zongzi, a traditional Chinese rice dumpling wrapped in leaves.
“We also want to help Rwandan factories upgrade their facilities and skills,” Chen said.
After seeing the peppers transported to China as products that could help local farmers and factories, Herman and Yang decided to open Hema Village at the end of 2019.
Herman pointed out that few local farmers grow habaneros because the market is small.
“A small amount is exported to Europe. And local demand is limited due to its spiciness. So, about half the harvest is wasted every year,” he explained.
“A young man in Rwanda will only make 10 yuan ($1.4) a day by working in the cities, but if they grow habaneros due to Hema’s orders, they can make 50 to 60 yuan on average,” Herman said.
He expressed his hope to introduce more people to profitable farming, rather than working as migrants for lower incomes, in the digital era, when e-commerce can facilitate greater demand and sales.
“It’s a chance for Rwandan people to join the new retail field and change their lives,” he said.
Rwanda’s main product is coffee. The country has over 33,000 hectares of coffee plantations with over half a million people working on them.
“Through livestream shows on Taobao, 1.5 tons of Rwandan coffee were sold within seconds, but it takes several years and skill to grow coffee,” Herman said.
“On the other hand, planting peppers is quite simple.”
And they can be harvested every eight months and sold immediately, he said.
Herman has asked his father, a doctor, to retire early to become the third worker on his farm.
“Each hectare needs about one person to take care of it. And during the planting and harvesting time, we need to hire more people to help,” Herman said.
“Through building more Hema Villages, Rwanda has the chance to become a country of digital agriculture.”