In our quest to expand the global market for shea, it is important to show skincare manufacturers the potential of shea butter and how it can be of benefit to the end user. Many of us believe that shea butter is a viable replacement for petroleum based emollients that are currently used by some cosmetic manufacturers.

Shea Butter Product by L'occitaine

Approximately 90% of the shea nuts produced are shipped to Asia, Europe and the US for use in the food industry.
One of the goals of branding African Shea is to use the Africa Shea logo wherever Shea is used. This means that a chocolate bar that has Shea Butter used as a Cocoa Butter Equivalent (CBE) will bear that logo. The goal is to bring more visibility to the use and sources of Shea butter anywhere it is used.

The cooperatives bring processed shea butter to the Union center where further filtering and packaging is done to produce a premium grade of shea butter for the local market.

They have future goals of targeting the international market, but right now they are meeting the local demand within Mali and the neighboring countries for quality shea and soap bars to be used for personal care.

Madam Fatima displays finished soap bar

Soap Bars Ready for Sale

Shea Butter Packaged in 1kg tubs for local use

The shea tree is a West African plant frequently found in villages and surrounding areas. The tree produces shea nuts towards the beginning of the rainy season. If the rainy season is generous, the trees produce many nuts. The tree’s wood burns very easily, and rural populations cut great numbers of shea trees to make charcoal.

Thanks to efforts by the agents of the Forest and Waters Departments and of village associations fighting against desertification, shea trees continue to exist.

Rural women – who are the people most affected by poverty – lead the efforts to process shea nuts into shea butter. When women sell shea butter in the marketplace, the income allows them to support their families. As detailed in the script, these women would greatly benefit if they had machinery such as a mill because it would help them transform the shea nut into a softer paste. Machinery would also help make the processing quicker and less tiring than processing by hand.

The Song-Taaba Yalgré organisation represents the interests of Burkina Faso’s shea butter producers, most of whom are rural women, by helping them to improve production and boost sales. Song-Taaba Yalgré itself is based in Ouagadougou, but most of its 2,000 members live in remote areas so communication is difficult, time-consuming and costly. The organisation therefore developed an ICT project to address this problem, with promising results.

SAGNARIGU, Jun 11, 2008 (IPS) – “Wherever I went, they laughed at me and called me ‘Habiba the empty mouth.’ I was always embarrassed,” says 45-year-old Habiba Alhassan. “I could not afford to smile; I could not open my mouth in public, when I took photographs I had to close my mouth so that I wouldn’t look ugly.”

With all her front teeth missing, Alhassan was an object of mockery in her village, Sagnarigu, in the northern region of Ghana. Too poor to afford artificial teeth, she seemed destined to live with the embarrassment for life. “My petty trade in cocoa drinks was hardly enough to feed me let alone replace my lost teeth,” she said.

But all that changed early last year, when she joined a rural women’s cooperative producing soap from shea butter. In less than six months, she was able to save more than $300 from her earnings to replace the missing teeth. “Nobody believed me when I said I was determined to replace the missing teeth, now I have done it,” Habiba said proudly.

The cooperative, known as the Ideal Woman Shea Butter Producers and Pickers Association is the product of a poverty eradication initiative for rural women in Northern Ghana. The initiative is backed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Japanese government under the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD). TICAD is a global framework for collaboration between Asia and Africa to promote economic development in Africa.

On a recent sunny afternoon in Minna, Nigeria, Thompson Ogunsanmi had a list of new developments in the area’s shea sector to share. It was a long list.

Activity in the shea business has increased rapidly in the last year thanks at least partly to last year’s industry conference and the concentrated efforts of shea stakeholders in Nigeria. With “Global Shea 2010: Maximizing Quality, Expanding Markets” set for March 16-19 in Bamako, Mali, many are expecting it to increase even more.

Sign up now for Global Shea 2010!

“Shea 2009 allowed Nigerians to see what was happening in Ghana and Burkina Faso and elsewhere,” said Ogunsanmi, who supports Niger State shea stakeholders through the German Development Cooperation, GTZ, and its Employment-oriented Private Sector Development Programme. “And they saw that there was some real potential in shea. When we got back from the conference, things really began to happen.”

“It was an eye-opener for us,” said Ahmed Kontagora, director general of the Niger State Commodities and Export Promotion Agency. “We are going to Mali for Global Shea 2010 in a big way so we can ensure we have gotten a market.”

Global Shea 2010 will focus on the key issues affecting shea, from the nut to the butter, the producer to the retailer.
Issues to be discussed include: Women’s Shea Butter Associations, Processors, Traders, Financial Institutions, Non-Governmental Organizations, Government, Civil Society, Exporters, Transporters, Logistics Providers, International Buyers and more.

For more information on the event please contact Global Shea
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How can African countries earn more from their raw materials. And how can the women of Mali improve their ability to trade with buyers in the West?

Korotouma Doumbia, a 29-year-old from south-west Mali, has no education or formal skills but she manages to earn the family income. She harvests shea nuts and turns them into shea butter, a popular ingredient in many western cosmetics.

The shea tree grows wild in nearly 20 countries in Africa and Mali has more shea trees than any of its neighbours. They are often cultivated for their oil and Korotouma’s village has some planted trees, but they also harvest the wild trees further from the village.

The women collect as much as they can carry. But about two thirds of Mali’s shea harvest stays on the ground. The trees are spread out and the women have no other means of transporting their harvest than carrying it on their heads.

One organisation that has tried to help Mali’s women earn more from their shea butter is the Development Trust Association or ACOD, a non-governmental group based in Bamako.

They buy Shea butter from farmers at a minimum price and then either resell it internationally or use it to make cosmetic products.

Elisee Sidibe, the group’s Permanent Secretary, says shea butter is an excellent way to fight poverty in rural Mali. “So if the government and its partners support the shea industry and help position it on the international market, then we could dramatically reduce poverty among women in rural areas.”

But the problem is that most women aren’t producing high-grade shea butter that can be sold internationally. They can sell their produce to the local market, but they get much less money for it than they could expect if they had access to better means of processing the butter.

The money they earn in the market is small compared to the profits made by big international cosmetics companies that use African shea butter in their creams and lotions.

Local experts believe that with more investment, the shea butter industry in Mali has huge potential for growth. This would impact not just the lives of women in rural areas, but also the country’s overall economy.