Our journey through Ethiopia over the past week has been a long and fruitful one. We left Addis Ababa on Sunday and returned Friday night. We traveled over 1500km finding users all over the southern part of Ethiopia, mainly in the region known as Oromiya. We dropped off 8 prototypes the week before, so we returned to all of those locations, plus we met with two potential manufacturing partners, and one potential distribution partner.
The feedback on the concept of the Pepper Eater has been really positive (better than I expected when I was working long days in the machine shop before we left) Everyone we talked with really liked the idea, but at the same time gave us very specific feedback on how they’d like to see it improved. Most of the comments were very consistent between users. And to top it all off, we legitimately sold 5 prototypes to women users. They saw enough value in our prototypes to actually pay us (though 3 were bought on credit)! However, selling our prototypes kind of made me feel like a Tupperware salesman. The women who bought the current prototypes said that it was more effective than their traditional methods (by hand and a mortar & pestle), but it was only really big enough for personal use in the home; not as an income generating device.
Awassa: Selam Awassa Business Group, Dama Funiture, & The Electric Miller
A chalk board at Selam shows some machining theory
After driving for six hours, while dodging suicidal donkeys, carts stacked high with corn, and small Izuzu shipping trucks, we arrived in Awasa. Within 10 minutes, Atkelt, a manager of Selam Awassa, met us at our hotel. He took us down to Awassa Lake just as the sun was setting. I was a beautiful way to start the trip.
(click link to read more about Awassa)
Enseno: Mustafah the Berbere Merchant
Mustafah shows us good quality peppers
Our next stop was Enseno, a town in the region of Maraco, which has a large berbere market. The week before, we had left two of our prototypes with Mustafah, a sucessful pepper merchant. When we arrive, Mustafah greeted us with a hand shake and brought out our two prototypes.
(click to read more about Enseno)
Roggie Village: HOPE Enterprises
Megan poses with a friend from Roggie
The next morning we again hit the road for Roggie, a very small village near Arsi Neggelle, where we had also left 2 prototypes the week before. Roggie was not accessible with our small car, so we parked it at the main road and started the 5-km walk. HOPE Enterprises and Menlo Park Presbyterian Church have helped build a school in Roggie, which is nestled above Shala Lake (the deepest lake in Ethiopia). As we made our way to Roggie we had gorgeous views of the Ethiopian countryside.
(click to read more about Roggie)
Ziway: The Burgeoning Woman’s Co-op
Megan interviews of a woman's co-op in Ziway
Our next stop was in Ziway, and so far no one had been interested in actually purchasing our Pepper Eaters. Our goal was to actually sell our prototypes to see how much people would pay for such a device, and if they actually found value in it (instead of just telling us what we wanted to hear). When we arrived at the woman’s cooperative in Ziway, they came out to great us carrying 2 kilos of processed pepper flakes, with all of the seeds separated.
Alaba: A Special Ramadan Market
The leader of a woman's co-op discusses peppers
In Alaba we had to retrieve 2 more Pepper Eaters. One was with a woman’s cooperative, and the other was with a berbere merchant. Alaba was especially challenging because our friend Bruk, who helped us make contacts and translated for us during our first visit, was unable to come with us. So we ventured to the Ethiopian Government Rural Development Office to ask around for a few names that Bruk had given us.
(click here to read about Alaba)
Awassa: The Berbere Processing Co-op
Two women process berbere with a mukacha
Our final stop was in Awassa, where we were meeting with SOS, a project that helps women cooperatives start projects for income generations. Three of the co-ops SOS has helped start process berbere to add-value and sell back into the market. When we arrived, there were three women in brown uniforms sorting peppers based on their color.
(click to read more about Awassa)
After it was all said and done, our two potential manufacturing partners seemed interested, but the biggest remaining challenge in Ethiopia is marketing and distribution. After driving all around Ethiopia this week (and we only scratched the surface), I really understand why. The roads are REALLY rough and hazardous, and sometimes it can take hours to go 40km. Yet at the same time, I believe we are really received validation for the concept of our design. It appears that there is a real need here, and hopefully we will be able to implement it fully!
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Tagged: ethiopia, Pepper Eater, User Testing
Our final stop was in Awassa, where we were meeting with SOS, a project that helps women cooperatives start projects for income generations. Three of the co-ops SOS has helped start process berbere to add-value and sell back into the market. When we arrived, there were three women in brown uniforms sorting peppers based on their color. We learned from them that peppers with a white or yellow discoloration had a fungus, and would affect the quality of the final product. This was definitely the first time we had seen any sort of quality control in pepper processing. They then took us into their production facility, which had a planned layout to help the flow of the pepper production. It turned out that SOS had contracted a food & agricultural scientist to help design and implement the pepper processing facility. But yet again, we were told that these women like the concept of the Pepper Eater, but it was too small to meet their needs. We left our final prototype with SOS, who will take it around to their other co-ops, and then return feedback to us after we return home.
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In Alaba we had to retrieve 2 more Pepper Eaters. One was with a woman’s cooperative, and the other was with a berbere merchant. Alaba was especially challenging because our friend Bruk, who helped us make contacts and translated for us during our first visit, was unable to come with us. So we ventured to the Ethiopian Government Rural Development Office to ask around for a few names that Bruk had given us. After a few awkward minutes of going from office to office, we found Hailu, a project manager at the Development Office. After we explained our situation to his boss, he was allowed to go with us to retrieve our prototypes and get feedback.
First, we headed to another woman’s cooperative who has experience making and selling stoves to generate income. But, since Alaba is the main pepper producing region in Ethiopia, every household also has an interest in processing peppers. Again, these women had seen value in the Pepper Eater, especially for their household, but told us they thought it was too small to use for income generation. After negotiating, the leader of the co-op agreed to pay 100 Birr for our prototype. However, especially with the end of Ramadan approaching, she did not have the cash on hand. Like the other women, she asked us to buy it on credit, and pay next week. Since we did not have a convenient connection to handle the transaction as in Ziway, Megan and I decided to give it to them for free. Since we had negogiated an actual deal, we considered it a legitimate “sale.”
Our final prototype was in the hands of Mamoush, a pepper merchant in Alaba. Megan, Hailu, and I then proceeded to head to the market to find Mamoush, since it was market day in Alaba. After asking one person, we were immediately led to Mamoush’s stand, as he is well known in Alaba. Like the previous merchants we talked to, he told us liked the idea, but that is was way too small for his purposes. When asked if he could return our prototype, he told us it would be impossible today, as another woman processor had it, and he did not have time to leave the bustling Ramadan market. We decided to cut our losses, and make our way back to Awassa for our final meeting.
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Our next stop was in Ziway, and so far no one had been interested in actually purchasing our Pepper Eaters. Our goal was to actually sell our prototypes to see how much people would pay for such a device, and if they actually found value in it (instead of just telling us what we wanted to hear). When we arrived at the woman’s cooperative in Ziway, they came out to great us carrying 2 kilos of processed pepper flakes, with all of the seeds separated. We were impressed with their diligence. These women really understood how to use the Pepper Eater for their benefit. Over a week of testing, they were the first to realize that by drying the peppers more than is normally done when processing by hand, the Pepper Eater was much more efficient. As with everyone else, these women agreed that to be successful commercially (i.e., to generate income) they need the Pepper Eater to be bigger and more efficient.
However, to our pleasant surprise, they still wanted to buy our prototype for home use, as they all agreed it was much easier than processing peppers by hand! Then, when they found out we had 3 more prototypes in our car, they told us they wanted to buy all that we had. We were shooting for a price of 100 Birr (US$10) for our prototype, but struck a deal of 50 Birr (US$5) each for 4 prototypes. However, we quickly learned that one of the biggest challenges for our users is having cash on hand. Even $5 is hard for them. Our translator, Danny, is a field agent for IDE, and quickly came up with a solution. The local distributor of water pumps, MYA, would be able to take the cash the next week (following the end of Ramadan). So, we walked away with 4 less Pepper Eaters, and an extra 100 Birr in our pockets!
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The next morning we again hit the road for Roggie, a very small village near Arsi Neggelle, where we had also left 2 prototypes the week before. Roggie was not accessible with our small car, so we parked it at the main road and started the 5-km walk. HOPE Enterprises and Menlo Park Presbyterian Church have helped build a school in Roggie, which is nestled above Shala Lake (the deepest lake in Ethiopia). As we made our way to Roggie we had gorgeous views of the Ethiopian countryside.
When we arrived, school was in session! There were 300 hundred children in the school yard, all dressed in blue uniforms. After getting feedback from a group of women from the village, we visited each of the class rooms, grades K through 5. As we went from each classroom, moving up in grade level, the students’ English got better and better, and by the end we were getting full on greetings from the class in English.
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Our next stop was Enseno, a town in the region of Maraco, which has a large berbere market. The week before, we had left two of our prototypes with Mustafah, a sucessful pepper merchant. When we arrive, Mustafah greeted us with a hand shake and brought out our two prototypes. He told us that he like the concept, especially over using the mukacha, but that our prototype was too small for his business, saying the Pepper Eater was “kid’s stuff.” He also gave us feed back on the output of the flakes, saying he likes to make two different consistencies: a finer consistency to sell and larger flakes to display the quality of his peppers. Mustafah also hires women to help him process his peppers, and he let them try the Pepper Eater. He told us that the prototype tended to get stuck, and some women then just gave up in frustration. He told us his wife wasn’t even interested in the Pepper Eater prototype, so with lots of great feedback, we packed up our two prototypes and returned to Ziway.
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After driving for six hours, while dodging suicidal donkeys, carts stacked high with corn, and small Izuzu shipping trucks, we arrived in Awasa. Within 10 minutes, Atkelt, a manager of Selam Awassa, met us at our hotel. He took us down to Awassa Lake just as the sun was setting. I was a beautiful way to start the trip.
The next day we took a tour of Selam’s facilities, and it was impressive! Their facilities were state of the art, and all of the workers were highly skilled. Selam Awassa has two parts: one is a vocational school and the other is commercial production to support the school. Selam has manufactured everything from water pumps, to wheat threshers, to a 35-kW hydro turbine.
After seeing all of the facilities, Moses, a trained well technician, took us to a professional miller’s shop in Awassa. This miller was able to output 400 kg of pepper flakes in 9 hours! When he saw our prototype he laughed at the size. There was no way our small prototype could even compete. But then I asked to see how he was able process so much berbere, and he took me through the mill house to a room in the back. There stood an electric pepper grinder 2-meters tall! Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see it run, but they were willing to open it up and show me how it worked. It used the concept of a hammer mill to shred the peppers into small flakes. The mill house workers had custom built this machine at an estimated cost of more than 10,000 Ethiopian Birr ($1000).
Our next stop was Dama, a furniture manufacturer who partnered with teams from Extreme Affordability in previous years. The owner, Fekadu, was extremely welcoming and showed us his current production facilities. He is currently producing and selling two products from our class: The Corn Sheller and The Mighty Matad.
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We’ve just returned to Addis Ababa for Ethiopian New Year after some very successful user testing in the southern region of Ethiopia. In just a few days, we’ve distributed eight Pepper Eaters to a variety of users, from a woman’s cooperative to a berbere (pepper) merchant. Our feedback has been positive and consistent. We were pleased to learn that people like the Pepper Eater and believe it to be easier and faster to use than the traditional large mortar and pestle, called a mukacha. One consistent suggestion has been to increase the size of the Pepper Eater to be “at least twice as large.” We’ve learned that women are used to processing at least 2-3 kilograms of peppers at a time with a mukacha!
User Testing in Enseno
Enseno: Our First Users
On our first day in Ziway, we met up with Bruk, an extremely energetic, intelligent, and well connected employee IDE Ethiopia. Being a former truck driver, Bruk has extensive knowledge of each region of Ethiopia. We traveled in his pickup to a village called Enseno, near the town of Tora, where we saw a bustling market. We made our way along rows of men at sewing machines to an area where women tearing piles of dried berbere peppers into small flakes. After demonstrating our product in the market, a local pepper merchant, named Mustafa invited us to his home. Surrounded by curious children, some men and women of the village took turns processing peppers with the Pepper Eater. We left two Pepper Eaters there with Mustafa, who will give it to the women he employs and give us feedback when we return next week.
Alaba: The Pepper Capital of Ethiopia
According to Bruk, “If anybody’s going to take you seriously about peppers, you have to go to Alaba.” Alaba, near the city of Awassa, is the heart of Ethiopia’s pepper trade. So that same day, we hopped into Bruk’s truck and drove south to Alaba. When we arrived at the open market at Alaba (the 2nd largest in Ethiopia), we could tell that Bruk was right! There were more peppers than I had even seen in my entire life – mountains of it! The merchant we spoke to there told us he brokers about 1000 kg of berbere per day. We showed him our product and he promised to pass it around to the pepper processors who work for him. As usual, our presence caused quite a stir, so we told the merchant when we would return and left. As we arrived at our hotel that evening, the streets got steadily busier as the sky darkened, with children’s voices and chanting drifting through the cool evening air. Primarily Muslim, people in Alaba were headed toward evening prayer for Ramadan.
A worker stuffs peppers into a 100kg sack!
The next day, Bruk brought us to the Government’s Rural Development Office in the woreda of Alaba. We met the office staff and they took us to a local women’s cooperative. These 15 women make efficient stoves out of cement and red ash to demonstrate and sell at the local market, and process peppers on an individual household basis. They also grow their own peppers, planting them in May and harvesting them after the end of the rainy season in November. The women took us to their pepper plots, where the plants stood small, green, and healthy; their white flowers in various stages of bloom. When we showed them our Pepper Eater, they laughed and smiled. They found the device easy to use, and thought that the sifter would be especially useful for keeping seeds for planting season. Again, their main concern was size. They observed that something bigger would allow them to complete the task at an even faster rate. They told us they would probably share one Pepper Eater between several households rather than keep one per family.
Roggie: A Village on a Hill
The next day, we went with our driver Gaetu to Roggie village. The road off the highway was rough, so we parked and made the 5 km trek up to our next destination on foot: a primary school built by HOPE Enterprises. Berhanu, the school director, accompanied us there, where a cluster of plain buildings overlooked an amazing view of Shala Lake. When we arrived, about 15 women were patiently waiting for us, seated on the ground talking softly. They immediately stood up and greeted us warmly, hugging us and shaking our hands, saying “Akeemjerta”, a greeting in Orominya. On a table they provided us, we demonstrated two Pepper Eaters. The group of women were eager to try it! After a bit, they gave us a few comments. Like everyone else, they thought the Pepper Eater should be twice as large! They also liked the sifter, and thought that it was “simple to understand.” When I asked if they liked our logo, one women told us that she thought it was a flower! Upon closer inspection, I can see that it doesn’t actually look much like the local berbere pepper.
Pepper processors in Ziway take a break to try out the Pepper Eater
Back in Ziway
The same day, we drove back to the IDE office in Ziway where we met Danny, an IDE Field Officer. He took us to a women’s co-op just north of Ziway. There we met with about eight women sitting under the shade of a tree. When we arrived, we realized we had left our peppers with the women at Roggie Village, and the peppers they had at this cooperative were already processed; no good for demonstrating. Luckily, Danny knew of a place just down the road that sells berbere, so we went along with him to buy a few kilos. We pulled over to the side of the road and walked past a couple of houses, where we found a field of tarps covered with drying berbere pulp! Three women were working at individual mukachas, the first I had seen since arriving in Ethiopia. Their hands and arms were covered halfway up to their elbows in red spiciness. They told us they process about 100 kg per day as a group. By chance, Sam and I had encountered a great opportunity. Sam ran back to the car to retrieve a Pepper Eater to give to them. One women liked it so much that she just kept grinding peppers for about five minutes straight, smiling the whole time. Again, and this time it was very obvious, the Pepper Eater needed to be bigger.
A field full of drying berbere
Over the next week, women all around the Ziway and Awassa areas will be using our Pepper Eaters, and forming opinions about them that will enable us to significantly improve our design. We’re excited to gather feedback when we return next week!
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Tagged: Alaba, HOPE, IDE, Pepper Eater, Peppers, User Testing, Ziway
It’s been only two full days in Addis and already we have ten prototypes – complete with hoppers, logos, and sifters – ready to go! We couldn’t have possibly accomplished this in such a short time without the folks here at IDE/Practica, who have been more helpful and generous than we could ever have expected. At 7:00 am this morning when I stepped outside to begin work, I found Sam, Abraham, and Abebe already discussing what remained to be done. Abraham, a brilliant technician, has single-handedly designed and prototyped a hopper for the Pepper Eater. The hopper is intended to increase the volume of peppers that can be added to the device, an important feature considering some women process up to 100 kg of peppers in one day. We spent most of the day machining and assembling this simple attachment, composed of three pieces of sheet steel that fit neatly above the grinding apparatus.
Sam sands a pice of a hopper.
Abebe helps to produce the hoppers.
We continued our work into the early evening. At some point in the afternoon, the heavens opened up and down came a good two inches of marble-sized hail. At first, we kept working, and then we just had to stop because hail was bouncing into the small workshop, protected only by a thin, blue tarp. All of us stood there together laughing, unable to communicate with words under the storm’s deafening roar. As abruptly as it began, the storm suddenly left us with mountains of ice under a clear sky.
The IDE truck is pummeled by hail.
With the help of our friends here at IDE, our Pepper Eaters now await our journey to Ziway tomorrow afternoon. If the people of Ziway are as generous and kind to us as those we have encountered here in Addis, then we are very fortunate.
The Pepper Eater is ready for action!
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Tagged: Addis, Hail, Prototypes, the pepper eater
