The Female Commodity Chain of Shea Butter: Burkinabè Producers, Western Green Consumers and Fair Trade
Derived from the shea nut in Sudano-Sahelian Africa, shea butter, or karité, has become an important ingredient in the global billion-dollar cosmetics industry. It has sparked the interest of aid organizations and fair trade advocates, who see promise with improved producer returns from marketing the nut butter. The most striking feature of contemporary shea commercialization, however, is that it represents a female commodity chain, linking traditional African women producers with female green consumers in the West. This unusual commodity chain provides unprecedented opportunity for women-in-development (WID) groups to organize female producers into cooperatives for improved prices and laborsaving technologies. However, as this case study of Burkina Faso reveals, butter preparation is time-consuming work that significantly augments rural women’s seasonal labor burden. Research in one of sub-Saharan Africa’s largest shea-producing countries indicates several concerns about the capacity of WID projects to improve rural Burkinabè women’s incomes and shea market share.