Over the past five years, demand for Shea products has grown in the European Union and the United States. Shea products is fundamentally linked to female income and household food across shea trees regions. With knowledge and equipment, the locals can benefit from international shea demand.
Nigeria is blessed with abundant natural resources including a number of cash crops. Shea is one of them and very important cash crop for mainly rural women. The tree, grows widely and naturally in West and Central Africa. The fruits are harvested late March till early July across the states in Nigeria.
It is valued because of the Shea butter extracted from the Shea nut – women gold.
The tree grows only in the wild, and do not usually yield fruit until they are 20 years old, and do not reach full maturity until they are about 40-50 years old. However, once productive, they will continue to bear fruits up until their 200th year. The long period taken to reach maturity has discouraged its planting in an organized plantation.
In Nigeria, the shea-tree thrive efficiently in Niger, Kwara, Kebbi, Kaduna and Oyo State. Shea tree is important for the livelihood of the rural population as it has been for centuries.
Tree of Life as it’s called by the local because it means everything to them.
They live and breathe shea day in day out year after year passed on to their daughters the technique of manually harvesting and processing shea nuts into butter allowing them to generate an income over which they exercise exclusive control. Because this is often the only income source for a woman.
Shea has multiple uses in many rural areas. The fruit contains sweet edible freshly pulp or mesocarp, which is locally consumed like mangoes and other wild seasonal fruits. The fat is used for cooking in some areas, the oil used for lamplight and candle-making.
The trunk bark and cotex, the roots and leaves are all used for preparation of many traditional medicinal remedies. The trunk of the shea makes excellent charcoal. It is the favored sources of wood fuel. The butter extracted from almonds contained in the kernels is the main economic product of the shea locally sold. It’s a mixture of fats and latex. It is locally used in traditional medicines and cosmetics. Its medicinal uses include protection of the skin against harsh weather, wound healing, cure of superficial skin irritation and sore muscles. These uses have long been recognized by pharmacologist and nutritional chemists in Europe to be effective.
Export trade on shea developed long, since in colonial times. It is used as valuable addition to moisturizer, creams shampoos and soaps. The high linoleic acid content of shea butter makes it ideal remedy against dry skin, dermatitis, sunburn, redness, chapping and eczema. Until recently, as much as 90% of shea exports from Africa were raw nuts that were processed and refined in the west, mostly in Europe. However, the figure has dropped to 65% as processing operations in West Africa have increased.
Nigeria account for highest percentage of shea nut exportation. The qualities of shea make it a valuable export. The rise in demand is due to the fact that cosmetics, personal care and pharmaceutical companies have increased the use of shea butter in their products. And highest demand in the production of Cocoa Butter Equivalents (CBE) or improvers (up to 5% content by weight is allowed under EU regulations) on chocolate, other confectionaries, and margarine. This has motivated Nigeria and other West Africa countries to go into export of Shea products.
New Commercial Uses
- Shea based adhesives, resins, and composites
- Shea Plastics and compounding
- Shea conversion into chemicals, solvents, and fuels
- Nutritional value and characterization
Shea Tree is a great cash crop of potential and with improved technologies and knowledge the shea communities can benefit from international shea demand, not just from local sell.
The shea pickers are the main source of shea butter world wild and are often most neglected and exploited. These women who pick shea nuts and those that process the shea butter are just getting peanut for their hard work because foreign buyers are taking advantage of them and smuggling the commodity through Nigerian land borders. The bulk of Shea nuts collected are exported through illegal border trading.
Constraints faced are weak organizational structures of pickers. Therefore, our main focus is protecting the pickers from exploitation. However, there’s a need to improve the value chain because its underdeveloped. They’re used to their traditional method of nut collection and processing which is time consuming with inconsistent quality.
If these women could access the information and knowledge that would allow them to improve their products at the beginning of the shea value chain, they then could produce more products with consistently higher quality with higher return.
Having identified the potential of the Shea butter market, the locals are encouraged to form groups, groups of women involved in the collection, processing and preservation of the nuts and production eventually shea butter will be formed. The groups formed are sustainability cooperatives establishment for both pickers and processors.
They’re being empowered to increase present level of productivity, quality and competitiveness. Providing them on field training on nut picking and processing as well as butter making with equipment, and linking them with buyers through our centers in various communities. They learned how the shea fruit is collected and processed into kernel influences the quality of the shea butter.
This is a long-term empowerment partnership project, developing skills, introduction, and adoption of improved technologies for processing shea butter. The project is transforming lives, they’ve access to markets and reliable income for them and their families. We’ll continue developing an environment that supports rural communities where shea tree grows. Encouraging the need to increase more women’s involvement in nut production and butter-making through cooperative organization. It can be argued that the cooperatives are NGO groups we put together so, they can effective and efficient.
