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Gashora Farms, Rwanda – building an international chili business…
Gashora Farms, Rwanda – building an international chili business
Written by Anja Schaefer
Gashora Farms, in Eastern Rwanda, is an agricultural enterprise started in 2015 and specialising in the cultivation, processing and export of chili peppers. Starting out with just a tenth of a hectare of land, the business now farms over 40 hectares and has contracts with more than 1,000 other farmers to supply more chilies.
According to information from the company, farmers are supported through soil restoration and research projects, and the company works on the principle that those who farm the land must also reap the benefits (Gashora Farm, 2021). The company states that it supports farmers and works with them in order to:
Help protect wilderness areas and public lands.
Build climate resilience through its research and development, which teaches individual farmers and farming cooperatives climate resilient practices and provides high quality seeds that are more resistant to climate change. In addition, they are transitioning to precision farming to minimise climactic impact.
Increase domestic incomes by providing income to 1,000 farmers, which reaches 3,000 individuals. This enables the children of these farmers to access basic education and primary health care.
(Changing Lives, n.d.)
The agriculture sector of Rwanda employs over 70 percent of the nation’s population and contributes greatly to foreign exchange earnings for the country. Since its foundation in 2015, Gashora Farm has been able to penetrate European and US markets with its dried chilli and other spice products. In 2019, the business signed a 5-year $500 million deal with GK International Enterprise Co Ltd., a global supplier of spice products, to supply chillies to the Chinese market (Buningwire, 2019).
In 2021, Gashora Farm expanded its production capacity further by signing a deal with Shumbatafari, one of Zimbabwe’s leading agribusiness firms, to secure 2,000 hectares of land in Zimbabwe. Gashora Farm’s founder, Diego Twahirwa, said this move was taking advantage of the good bilateral trade relations between Rwanda and Zimbabwe, which were further strengthened by a trade agreement between the two countries in 2021 (zwnews, 2021; Southern African Times, 2021).
In an interview for the Rwanda Development board, Diego Twahirwa, the owner of Gashora Farm, shared his insights on entering and succeeding in saturated export markets.
Interviewer: There is a murmur that chilli could be the next most expensive trade commodity of Rwanda, would you agree?
Diego Twahira: I would agree because when we see [that] the top export crops we have right now [are] coffee and tea, and when we look at [that] worldwide we don’t we have competitive advantage like Brazil [or] other countries like China for tea. But Rwanda can have the competitive advantage for chilli because, first of all, labour – there’s no technology to [harvest] chili, you have to by hand. We have […] competitive advantage [in] the climate, [in the availability of] labour, [in] government support […]. So, I think […] we have everything to make […] chili […] the top crop to be exported in the country.
Int.: How did you compete with these businesses that were already veterans in the industry and what was the USP [unique selling proposition] of your chili?
D.T.: […] the thing is it helped us to understand […] the sector and […] what is the gap and [that] it has a big demand. […] Currently the […] global demand is about five billion tonnes [of dried chili per year] and the [supply is] about three billion tons. That means […] there is a gap of two billion tonnes that means [there is] demand [for our chili]. […] When we compare ourselves with other players, like Indian farmers, Pakistan or Sri Lanka, we do have [a] kind of competitive advantage. […] Our climate allow us to produce chili [quickly]. We also have [affordable] labour available. [In] some other countries […] labour is very expensive, and it doesn’t allow them to compete. […] Another thing which we do have kind is […] our land. We […] have […] virgin land which doesn’t require us to spray chemicals, and some of the big […] clients [..] prefer to source their chili from us because they believe that we can […] produce [a] product which doesn’t have chemicals. […] For them it’s also an alternative supply because other countries […] can’t supply [as quickly] because of the climate.
Question
a) Explain what is meant by corporate social responsibility and why Gashora Farm should engage in social responsibility activities.
b) Using the information from the case study, how activities by Gashora Farm could be seen to meet the different elements of Carroll’s pyramid of corporate social responsibility and – based on the information available – to what extent you think Gashora Farm meets the criteria of CSR according to Carroll’s model.
