An unobtrusive visit by Prince Charles and his wife Camilla Parker Bowles to the Brilliant Restaurant in 2007 would have received little attention until a British paper last month carried a brief story on what they were served. It emerged that the sweet potatoes they were served had been grown in a village in Kenya. The Indian chef Gulu Anand, who works at the restaurant, became an instant attraction—serving a prince reported to be fussy about what he eats catapulted the profile of the London restaurant, and with it the brand of sweet potatoes that tickled the Royal palate. Anand later said the Prince enjoyed his meal enormously and the “mysterious” serving turned out to be sweet potatoes from a farming community in Kabondo, near Oyugis town in Homa Bay County. The distributors of the sweet potatoes, Sahara Communities Abroad (Sacoma) have been keen to ensure that the product exported to UK from Kenya meets the strict export requirements, and today, demand far outstrips supply. “Farmers supply us with five to 10 tonnes a week, but this is meagre because our estimates show that the market can absorb up to 120 tonnes per day,” says Sacoma Managing Director Perez Ochieng. “We are working on a programme to develop the farmers’ capacity to supply more of the product,” Ochieng added. The collaboration has seen fortunes turn bright for small-scale farmers in Kabondo as other restaurants in London and Coventy join the scramble for the popular sweet potatoes. “It is not common to see a grass- thatched house in Kabondo now because we all have houses roofed with iron sheets, courtesy of the money flowing in from the exports,” says Tobias Muga, the secretary of Kabondo Sweet Potatoes Project Farmers. “There are widows who used to beg for money at local markets, but when this project picked up, people went back to their farms. Those who don’t have their own farms have been employed as workers in other people’s farms. Life is good,” Muga
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 17:59:03 +0000
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