In its natural and raw form usually has a yellowish colour.
A healthy butter that is used in Africa for cooking and in skincare.
Called Mai Kadai ( in Hausa) locally by the rural producers in Northern Nigeria, known as Nkuto ( in Ashante) in the Ashante region of Ghana.
• A wild Shea tree that grows naturally in Western African countries
• has the ability to bear fruits for up to 200 years
• high in demand finished product!
Shea butter recently has become increasingly popular globally as an important ingredient in skin and haircare products.
However, the increase in demand for shea butter by the international market makes it difficult for the women who have being working hard generation after generation for centuries to benefit from this rapid demand for their product. The demand for shea butter has brought about the drop in quality, and made it a commodity product. As expensive as shea butter gets, the women farmers are still not benefiting or improving their lives from the sale of shea butter because the business is not fair.
Our women farmers insist on preserving the traditional way of producing shea butter and maintain the culture of processing shea butter. This manual process of processing the shea nuts retains the sustainable natural resources and nutrients found in shea butter.
The women work together to extract this fatty natural herbal butter from the shea nut, using a manual intensive process. A process that requires a detailed attention, moving from stage to stage starting from farms, to boiling the nuts, outter shells removal , sun drying the seeds, crushing the nuts by pounding and the process goes on and on till the smooth butter is achieved slowly.
These farmers are small scale farmers, with the skills that have been passed down from generation to generation of women and girls to process and obtain shea butter to a smooth and unrefined form.
Schiffkorb works together with these farmers of Shea butter, the women in west Africa particularly those women farmers in Northern Nigeria and Ghana that produce shea nut products in small scale.
it is our hope that direct trade with the farmers will improve their main source of income and boost the local communities economy by exporting their products.