In recent years, the demand for shea butter increased globally as well as numbers of people involved in exporting out of Africa. This also led to increase in price due to Demand. The local African women involved in the processing of shea are facing a number of challenges in the shea value chain. The inability to compete favorably and make more money under a fair pricing model in the shea value chain is a major setback for them.
Managing The Shea Butter Value Chain
Shea is an important ingredient in food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical products worldwide. In order to support continued growth and secure supply, EXXENZE / SHEA BUTTER INTERNATIONAL launched a sustainability program that identifies challenges facing shea communities and implements solutions via guidelines and collaborative projects. The sustainability guidelines were developed after consulting with the locals.
Improvement in the shea butter value chain management will create competitiveness that will ensure that small and medium scale shea women will have the incentives to change behavior patterns. To this end, the Exxenze’s shea butter value chain management drive includes;
- Group organization: organizing local women into groups, associations, and clusters so they can have stronger negotiating power with buyers based on the ability to aggregate their supply. It enables women to benefits from training and capacity building that otherwise is not tenable on individual bases.
- Education: training and encouraging people on how to produce better quality shea butter, including how to manage income, expenses, and other important aspects of running the business.
- Sustainability: Value creation in our product and supply chains in ways that deliver economic, ecological and society value add at same time has Impact on society and the environment.
Sustainability Guidelines
While many of the African nut pickers have a reason to smile, the production of shea butter seems to be leaving its mark on the ecosystem as well.
Traditionally, the production of shea butter includes the use of a large volume of firewood. As more shea butter processing is performed locally and mechanically, it has a significant effect resulting in carbon emission into the ecosystem. Scientists stress the importance of considering the tree as an integral part of the chain. The women must play their role in promoting shea tree protection – deforestation threat.
In order to support continued growth and secure supply, EXXENZE -SBI developed sustainability program that identifies challenges and implements solutions via collaborative projects.
- Ensure proper registration of women’s groups with local authorities
- Develop baseline for shea kernel cost of production and farm gate prices
- Processing of nuts into butter with the use processing machinery.
- Using oven for the roasting of shea nuts instead of cutting off trees to make firewood.
- Provide warehouses for the women shea nut collectors sacks and pallets to store shea kernels
- Quality training in best practices of shea kernel collection, processing, and storage
- Practical solutions to improve workplace conditions for collectors and processors
- Market linkages with purchasers of shea kernels/ shea butter
Also, women who organized themselves into groups (cooperatives) are more likely to contend and win against the issue of gender inequality that is gradually threatening the shea butter production sector, particularly in labor control and profit control in shea processing. Thus, it becomes crucial to developed women-focused literacy/education materials structured around marketplace literacy to help women develop knowledge to counter possible gender economic shifts and to maintain their position in the sector.
Supporting local women in Managing the Shea Butter Value Chain
The processing of shea butter is a social and cultural event that brings women together, usually for the common purpose of generating income; One of the main finding is that the women felt significant social empowerment from belonging to shea groups.
EXXENZE/ SBI shea butter manufacturer and supplier that is seeking to empower local shea communities nut pickers to improve in all key aspects of the shea butter production chain. Improvement in the shea butter value chain will help these women be more competitive, and also ensure that they will have the incentives to change behavior patterns as well as overcome other significant drawbacks surrounding market requirement.
This is an ongoing project and we continue encouraging more women from shea communities to partake according to their geographically locations, so it doesn’t complicate group meetings due to distance travel. However, solving these challenges s won’t be easy, but we ain’t looking back.
We’ve taken up this initiative, funded by us in Nigeria, with a hands-on approach, supporting, stimulating and training the groups.
Based on our findings on post-harvest processing methods which determine product quality. The project developed training programs that will enhance added product value through increased product quality, improved processing techniques, the use and maintenance of improved processing equipment, and ‘best practices’ of shea butter production from harvest through packaging.
On the efficiency of the methods, semi mechanized method is adopted, it consumes less water, fuel wood and labour hours in the extraction process compared to the traditional method that is time and resource consuming that the women are used to.
They learned that shea butter quality is a function of both the processing techniques used, and shea nut characteristics which largely reflect tree and nut genetics.
Understanding, technical aspect that the quality of final product (shea butter) is largely determined by the quality of raw material which in turn depends fundamentally on time and attention invested by the primary producer to improve quality on a long-term sustainable basis.
The training specifically addresses the specialized and differing product requirements for shea butters supplied to the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and agro-food industries.
Two site managers are selected among the current communities we work with to coordinate day-to-day work and two of our trained representatives reporting on producers’ best practices during training sessions. The sustainability working group will consider results and challenges each year and make recommendations to the project improvement.
Further training programs, to be implemented in partnership with national institutions and community-based organizations will base on marketing and management skills of rural producers.
Fair Pricing improvement In The Shea Value Chain
These Women harvest 92% of all shea nuts and carry out the labour intensive task of producing shea butter, though they are not usually farmers or landowners.
Very poor women with fewer income opportunities tend to sell the kernels, immediately after harvesting and post-harvest processing, often at the lowest market prices, in order to buy what is necessary at that moment in time, while other women store the nuts and sell or process them into butter at a later time.
Against this backdrop, many African women are still disconnected from the general global shea market setup. They end up being price-takers due to the absence of quality-price structure, and as such prevent shea nuts or its butter extract from being traded as a real commodity. This is the unfortunate paradox that characterizes shea butter production and supply.
To tap into global shea markets, producers must meet strict quality standards if they are to secure value-added butter making activities rather than losing out. High-quality butter raises price of the commodity.
Aligning supply and demand correctly through our production process and through shea women groups we put together producing a high-quality product that will flow promptly with market demand and to generate fair pricing for the women
Collaboration and Working Incentive
EXXENZE/SBI shea butter initiative is driven by a logical overall program designed that seeks to address and manage key risks and challenges for the betterment of shea women’s lives.
Our primary objective of the project is to establish a regional and international consensus on issues of shea product quality, with reference both to shea kernel and shea butter, as a basis for enhanced ‘trace-ability ‘along the supply chain.
Reinforcing sound management to sustain the collaboration, it is important to maximize returns to the primary producers because profitability of primary producers is an incentive for investment of time to address the technical aspects of production which determine product quality, also reinforcing product quality control during processing, and to sustain the product certification system beginning at the local (producer) level.
Rural producer groups must however overcome other significant drawbacks such as illiteracy. Their reliance on local market and middle men market result in lower producer prices and greater uncertainty in getting the product to international markets.
As socially engaged company, we facilitated these issues for their role must therefore be sustained. Sufficient resources must also be allocated to rural producers, who have little to none economic opportunities.
The participation of women in the international market will increase the value of their products and their labor. Besides developing methods that can improve access to information and knowledge, other concerns regarding gender issues in the participation of women in the international market can only improve.
The lasting culture of solidarity between shea producers, and the pride women take in their work has rendered these exchanges fruitful.
