We started growing peppers two years ago and at the time, these were regarded as a luxury food. You could buy them in the better supermarkets but they were imported from South Africa and cost around 5,000 Malawi Kwacha per kg. Small quantities of local varieties were also being grown but these were small and quite bitter fruits, and often very poor quality.

We are only a modest organisation so it seems ridiculous to say that we have changed the market – but we have! We help our growers to produce high quality peppers and the effect has been that the supply has greatly increased, the price has fallen to only 2,500 Kwacha per kg, and demand has surged because now they are affordable for many more people. More and more people around Mzuzu city are developing a taste for our sweet peppers.

Peppers grow all year in the greenhouses and, even at the lower price, offer the growers as good an income as tomatoes.

What’s more, the supermarkets in the city now buy all their peppers from us, reducing imports, keeping their costs low, and driving prices down.

This has been fascinating for me because I can remember, growing up in the 1970s, we rarely ate peppers at home. I don’t imagine they were available all year and they were certainly expensive because they were imported, so our salads were tomato, cucumber and lettuce. Somewhere along the line that changed and peppers are a huge product in Scotland, and now we’re seeing the same thing in Mzuzu. It feels like a small victory but hopefully there is more to come: improving nutrition and reducing food costs, as well as our fundamental aim of increasing the incomes of our growers.

Atusaye inspecting the peppers in our chill store.