Increasing exports of sheanuts and butter holds tremendous potential for West Africa’s economy. Global Shea 2010 helped move the industry closer to realizing shea’s promise.

 

“Shea is without doubt the most important resource collected in the Sudano-Sahelian countries,” said Mali’s Prime Minister Modibo Sidibe in opening remarks. “The conference is an ideal forum to emphasize the value of and to promote internationally the shea industry.” U.S. Ambassador Gillian Milovanovic echoed his thoughts.

“The impacts of the business connections you will make at this conference will help to transform the shea industry – and with it the lives of millions of people in West Africa,” Milovanovic told conference participants. “The U.S. Government continues to be committed to supporting the growth of high potential export industries, such as shea.”

The conference was a window onto the world of shea sponsored by a broad cross-section of the industry, from global business stakeholders like AAK and Wilmar to donors and NGOs like GTZ, SNV, Oxfam, USAID Mali’s IICEM project as well as service providers including EcoCert, Stanbic Bank and Maersk/Damco.

It included demonstrations on how to make a shea lotion (it looked and smelled good enough to eat) and how to graft the trees so they fruit sooner (it looked surprisingly easy).

Export companies received training on everything from obtaining access to finance to finding appropriate packaging. And all stakeholders discussed developing an Africa Shea brand and forming an industry alliance to promote the industry globally.

Civil society organizations presented the need to involve women sheanut pickers in the industry more fully and major retailers looked for new products at the conference’s exhibition for the thousands of shops they supply in Europe and the United States.

Sharing knowledge, making connections

“The main purpose of Shea 2010 was to share knowledge and help stakeholders make connections,” said Trade Hub Shea Sector Expert, Dr. Peter Lovett. And it succeeded several times over, participants said, informally and formally. A one-day training event preceded the conference and at the end of the event a business-to-business forum matched companies to discuss specific opportunities.

Stories of connections and exchanges abounded: At one point, Francesca Opoku of Solution Oasis in Ghana, met with shea entrepreneurs from Cameroon at her stand in the exhibition space.
“I showed them my product – they weren’t familiar with it,” she said of her black soap. Opoku uses cocoa pod husks in the making of the soap, a new idea for the Cameroonians. They invited her to Cameroon to show them how to do it.

Funlayo Alabi of Shea Radiance (read her blog here) met buyers at major international retailers like Royal Ahold at the conference. And at a site visit to a shea producing facility on the last day, she saw appropriate technology for the shea butter facility she is developing with women’s cooperatives in Nigeria.

“I saw the types of techniques that they can use,” she said. “We can definitely adapt the technology to our needs, too.”

An industry alliance

The shea industry is relatively small and it rarely finds itself in one place. It is also a diverse value chain: the conference put women from rural areas at the same table with representatives of international companies that produce specialty fats for the world’s largest confectionary makers and high-end natural cosmetics.

Having a conference once a year establishes dialogue but not the sustained effort necessary to help the industry tackle its most pressing issues and promote itself globally. So, the prospect of an industry alliance generated great interest.

The industry needs to come together formally, stakeholders agreed, so that an annual conference’s benefits are happening every day.

“The alliance would be a major step forward,” said Dr. Peter Lovett. “For centuries, shea has played an integral role in the lives of millions of people in West Africa, but the industry has not collectively been able to promote shea to the world. An alliance is an effective way to do that and agreements made bu such industry-led associations, can also lead to quality improvements too, with equivalent gains in value.”

Major players in the industry agreed that an alliance would be helpful.

“It’s extremely important,” said Santosh Pillai of Wilmar, a leading processor of sheanuts in West Africa. “Every industry has an alliance. Anything that brings in a level of responsibility is always a good idea.”

Kadijatou Lah of Mali’s Lahwal International and who works with thousands of women who make shea across the country, said an alliance would help the industry.

“We could do so much with an alliance,” she said. “We could discuss issues affecting price, like quality. We could set up quality standards, too.”

The world’s leading buyer of sheanuts, AAK, was also cautiously optimistic that an alliance could now be established.

“I think the idea is good, but for the moment I think it will be difficult to get people together,” said Monika Hjorth, a senior employee of AAK’s Sourcing & Trading department, which purchases an estimated 60 percent of all sheanuts harvested for export from West Africa. “There must be true interest from all the big industry players before we can try and do something.”

An alliance could help the industry achieve a variety of goals but initially would focus on promotion of the sustainable production, trade and use of shea globally.

“There are so many issues that we could work on,” said Hjorth. “Improving quality could be very important for the broad mass of people in Africa. It would be for us a win-win situation.”

But forming alliance is not so simple, said Pillai, echoing a common refrain.

“You cannot just meet in one place and expect this to happen,” Pillai said. “Everyone should now go back to his or her country and think about this, and then we should meet in three to six months.”

Increasing demand for shea would be the alliance’s first priority, conference participants agreed. The alliance could also develop quality standards for sheanuts and butter, which, if enforced, could increase prices for women at the very bottom of the value chain.

“These are the poorest women in the world,” said Peter Stedman of The Body Shop. “The key question is how you get value back to the women. The answer is quality. Companies can afford to pay a premium but only if they get quality nuts.” But delivering education and premiums into such an invisible and fragmented industry will be difficult, as he so eloquently stated, “90% of consumer shea knowledge is on the butter, whereas 90% of the trade is in sheanuts”.

The conference concluded with visits to two shea producing villages, where shea’s importance is culturally profound. Its importance economically, through increased exports to international markets, holds the potential to transform millions of lives