Shea Butter

This entry is dedicated to my daughter Lani BonaDea who told me about shea butter before I ever came to Mali.

Shea butter is becoming important world wide because it is becoming the preferred ingredient in cosmetics, and chocolate products. It is important here in Mali because it is an untapped resource and Malian shea butter has a better consistency than in other parts of Africa resulting it being in bigger demand if the quality is right. Shea butter has the potential to help women of Mali to generate a higher income because it is considered women’s activity.

We visited two businesses that work with shea butter. One of them was a woman who bought the dried nut and sold them to exporters. The name of her business is Shea Baara and her name is Lah Dasse. She owns two trucks and buys in quantities of 10 tons or more.

The other business was a women’s association that bought shea butter and went on to make soap and pomade products. They are looking for more retail outlets for their products.

The shea tree grows all over the southern part of Mali and produces nuts that can be simply gathered when they fall to the ground. This method is actually recommended over shaking the tree to fall the nuts. The nut can be dried and then sold or it can be processed into shea butte and then sold. The shea butter can be made by individual women and can be stored as a savings account to be drawn on and sold through out the year.

Traditionally here in Mali shea butter is used for cooking oil, moisturizer, a hair pomade, medicinal uses, and ointment for muscles and joints. For Medicinal uses some people ad plant extracts to shea butter and ingest it to treat stomach problems.

Shea falls within the domain of women’s work therefore women stand to benefit from the efforts to improve the shea market in Mali. Shea offers a source of income separate from husbands that can be used to meet important family needs such as children’s clothing and school.

A benefit that shea holds over other agricultural products is that shea trees fruit during the rainy season which here in Mali is the lean season for food and income. These are months of July through September. This period is known as “the hungry times” here in Mali because the previous year’s food has been exhausted
Many organizations are working with women’s associations across southern Mali to improve the quality of the dried nut by helping women dry the nut in a way that it stores better and has less toxins. They are working with villages as a whole to consolidate their produced nuts and sell them to a buyer in bulk when the price for shea butter is high yielding more income for the women of the village.