African Shea Butter: A Feminized Subsidy from Nature

Abstract

The shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa) is indigenous to Africa's Sudano-Sahelian region and crucial to savanna ecosystems and peoples. African women have long collected, marketed and transformed shea nuts into a multipurpose butter. The growing global trade in shea butter destined for the Western food and cosmetics industries thus represents an opportunity to bolster impoverished female incomes. However, such international sales are also prompting changes in the west African shea landscape. This article examines the role of shea as a female heritage in Burkina Faso, West Africa's largest shea exporter. It focuses on the knowledge systems informing the management, conservation and processing of shea. It also considers the effects of global shea commercialization on the maintenance of traditional agroforestry practices, tenure rights, and butter-making techniques. In so doing, the article illuminates the cultural and botanical heritage of shea as well as the significance of this species in biodiversity protection, African natural heritages and female knowledge systems.

Shea (Vitellaria paradoxa) Butter Production and Resource Use by Urban and Rural Processors in Northern Ghana

“…It is estimated that shea can potentially yield up to 150 million US Dollars and contribute up to 12% of the total household income in the poorest households of the savannah areas [13]. Shea is exported as raw kernels or as shea butter to serve the high-value cosmetic industry and the wide range of food products, including chocolate in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan [8,11,12,14]. The reviewed literature on shea reveals at least three broad categorizations.…”

“…The data and views obtained from these three sources enabled triangulation for a better reliability of the exact parameters and quantities involved in the study [26]. Many other studies have relied on questionnaire surveys for analyzing the processing of shea butter and the links to rural livelihood [14,[20][21][22]27]. Some studies conducted by Stichting Nederlandse Vrijwilligers (SNV)-Netherlands Development Organization [18] on energy use analysis for promoting the use of a roaster stove in shea butter processors provided a useful basis for designing this study.…”

“…They largely concentrate on the potentials of shea butter production and the quality of the kernel and butter in reports and training manuals for supporting their capacity building programs that help processors improve shea butter quality as well as generate employment and the associated livelihood outcomes for rural stakeholders [12,18,19]. Other literature in this category takes on the gendered nature of shea with women as the major actors in the local processing [13,14,18,20,21]. The third body of literature analyzes the economics of input-output relationships for different local processing methods such as the traditional, semi-mechanized and other improved processing techniques.…”

Globalisations in a nutshell: Historical perspectives on the changing governance of the shea commodity chain in northern Ghana

“…food ingredients, skin-care products and household incomes, for at least 200 years (Buttoud 2001;Wardell et al 2002b;Chalfin 2004a;Elias and Carney 2007).…”

“…2 We suggest that the comparative lack of data regarding the shea trade also reflects the complexities of unrecorded international trade with shea products moving south and north across an international border since colonial boundaries were first defined (May 1985;Ellis and MacGaffey 1996;Fold and Reenberg 1999;Chalfin 2001;Wardell et al 2003b). The paper was also inspired by the significant scholarly work which has focused on the role of women in African economic development, and gendered commodity chains (see, for example, Boserup 1970;Clark 1994;Bryceson 1995;House-Midambe and Ekechi 1995;ChamleeWright 1997;Chalfin 2004a,b;Kalu and Rachael 2006;Elias and Carney 2007;Shackleton et al 2011. See also Mwangi and Mai 2011).…”