Making sure that shea butter is turned into gold

If you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know that shea butter is now a popular ingredient in beauty products due to its natural moisturising and healing properties.

As I’m currently volunteering in the shea industry in northern Ghana, I’ve just been asked to write an article for ‘Ethical Consumer’ magazine in the UK so I thought I’d share some of what I’ve written with my blog readers too.

You may remember that shea butter is made by processing the shea nuts inside shea fruits that grow on shea trees. The trees aren’t farmed but grow in the wild across the dry Sahel region between Senegal in West Africa and Uganda in East Africa.

According to the Global Shea Alliance, more than four million rural women in West Africa make an income from shea, often referred to as ‘women’s gold’.

So why should we care about the ‘suppliers’ in the shea supply chain?

These rural women are ‘suppliers’ and their social context makes them vulnerable. They are generally living in poverty, are badly organised, innumerate and illiterate. This means that they are not in a good position to negotiate with buyers.

They see shea as a livelihood but they don’t always benefit as much as they should. Hunger at the end of the barren dry season can force them to accept low prices and very often, they are not able to invest in improving their children’s future and can’t afford the healthcare their families need.

Arishetu, from the shea collecting group in Wayamba is facing problems which are not uncommon amongst her colleagues: “We need help with sanitation and water. Malnutrition is a problem for my children”.

So what does ‘ethical shea’ actually mean?

Ethical shea therefore means enabling the poorest people in the shea supply chain to improve their working conditions, their lives, and the quality of their products, become better organised and negotiate fair prices. Ethical shea butter is good for business and has a positive social impact.

The mission of SeKaf Ghana, producer of TAMA cosmetics in Tamale, Ghana is to use its shea butter products to help alleviate rural poverty in northern Ghana. It pays women a 15% premium above the market price and trains them to ensure they produce the best quality, organic nuts.

The Kasalgu Shea Butter Cooperative processes the nuts into butter at the factory site and increased demand has created more work for the women.

This year I’ve helped the company to assist some of its women’s groups to set up community savings schemes. These women have grown their small businesses and can now afford school fees and medical bills.

When asked about why TAMA customers in the UK should care about where their shea butter came from, Sana Yidana, Leader of the Kasalgu Shea Butter Cooperative said:

“I want customers to look at the packaging and know who made the shea butter in there. We are now able to save some money and pay our daughters’ school fees. My life is improving. It’s making a difference to us”.

So how can you tell if your shea butter is ethical?

An ‘ethical’ shea business will basically treat its women shea pickers and processors well so you should start by looking at the company’s policies towards rural women. L’Occitane and Body Shop have strong community development programmes for the women they work with in Burkina Faso and Ghana respectively and Ghana’s TAMA brand is forming partnerships with NGOs to establish more community savings schemes.

Third party accreditations such as Fairtrade or organic are also good indicators but bear in mind that getting these accreditations can be prohibitively expensive for African businesses.

You can also check whether the company is a member of the Global Shea Alliance. GSA members have to meet certain criteria, agree on a sustainability programme and commit to ensuring that all shea stakeholders benefit from the business.

Ethical TAMA shea butter soaps, lotions and oils are currently available at the Afroworld shop at 7 Kingsland High Street in London (E8 2JS, Tel: 020-7275-8848) and there are plans to export to the UK in larger numbers very soon so watch this space! See www.facebook.com/TAMAcosmetics and www.tamacosmetics.com for details.

The shea market: manufacturers and middle (wo)men

This month I’ve been writing about the shea market and have introduced you to the shea nut collectors and the shea butter processors.

So what happens next?

Shea butter is traditionally used throughout Africa for “frying, adding to sauces, as a skin pomade [moisturiser], for medicinal applications, to make soap, for lanterns and for cultural purposes at ceremonies (births, weddings and funerals).” (Global Shea Alliance website)

Shea nuts and butter are also exported and around 90%-95% of shea used abroad is for food manufacturing, mostly for chocolate (it has the same melting point as cocoa butter), confectionary and margarine, much of it in the US market. However, the shea nuts are generally processed into refined shea butter in factories abroad rather than in Africa.

The use of shea butter in cosmetics and personal care items is growing and accounts for around 5-10% of shea exported from Africa. Shea butter is known to have therapeutic properties and it can heal and moisturise skin and reduce wrinkles due to its high level of antioxidants (especially in organic, unrefined shea butter). The local people have been using it for years and almost all West Africans will have used it at some point in their lives, particularly during the dry Harmattan period when people suffer from cracked lips and heels.

The Body Shop’s Anita Roddick discovered the amazing benefits of shea butter when she travelled to Ghana and the Body Shop has been trading with a community not far from Tamale for years now. L’Occitane also has a shea butter operation in Burkina Faso. Both companies are recognised for helping to develop the communities they work with and the Body Shop’s way of operating set the  standards now used by the Fairtrade foundation.

However, this isn’t always the case. It’s great that shea butter is reaching such large audiences through cosmetics and food but the majority of the industry it is not actively helping the people at the bottom of the chain who are generally very poor.

The middle (wo)men traders benefit from buying the raw shea nuts cheaply in places like Ghana and then sell to customers abroad. The manufacturers buy the nuts from the traders and then add further value by processing it into shea butter using machines. They might manufacture the end product themselves or sell the butter to another manufacturing company.

So the middle (wo)men and manufacturers do business, make lots of profit and benefit from the market opportunities available outside Africa. However, this doesn’t really improve the lives of the shea collectors and processors. Do you remember Mma Fati and Mma Sana?

Thankfully, organisations like the Global Shea Alliance (GSA) recognise this. GSA’s  initiatives include improvement of quality standards (to grow the international market for African shea butter), sustainability programmes to protect natural resources and improve collecting and storage, and training/support for rural shea collectors. I went to their conference in Abidjan in March this year (see previous post and photo below).

The company I’m working with is an executive member of GSA and is involved in all stages of the market. It is adding value to the shea nuts in Ghana so that people here can benefit.

SeKaf Ghana buys nuts and adds a premium so that the shea nut collectors get more money per bowl of nuts than they would at market. They also train the shea nut collectors to ensure that their nuts are the best quality and are not rejected.

The company provides space and resources for the local women to process shea butter on site and also trains them to ensure that the butter is premium quality. The women are paid per 25kg box of finished and packaged shea butter and ways of increasing production are being researched. The more the women produce, the more they get paid.

The company sells the raw, unrefined, organic shea butter (perfect for cosmetics) to buyers and manufacturers abroad but also makes shea butter cosmetics itself (the TAMA range that I’ve talked about many times!).

By processing shea butter and making natural cosmetics within Ghana, SeKaf is providing jobs, a guaranteed market for the women, fair prices and high quality standards for export. I’ve also assisted the company to set up savings and loans schemes with a couple of the women’s groups. As a result of all this, the people at the bottom of the chain benefit and the profit stays in Ghana.

So, as a shea butter consumer, it’s good to know whether the shea butter moisturiser or tasty chocolate you’re enjoying is helping people like Mma Fati and Mma Sana out of poverty or keeping them in it.

In the next post I’ll talk about the end customer, what they are actually getting out of the shea market and what sorts of questions they should be asking.