Nuts For Growth
Ghana’s rural shea nut collectors go global
Tamale, Ghana – Dora Torwiseh is the fourth generation of her family to be involved with shea butter. The generations before her successfully sold this natural, plant-based fat used as a moisturizer and cooking oil extracted from the shea kernel.
But her vision for its impact on Ghana’s Northern Region was bigger. From a small village, she continued her education and started Nuts for Growth, which now operates the largest shea processing facility in West Africa
Primary Text“We are blessed. Other regions can boast of cocoa, can boast of gold, or places to fish. We are blessed with the savannah, with our sunshine, our shea trees, our shea fruits, and very good soil to be able to cultivate multiple crops.”
Secondary Text— Doris Torwiseh
Using northern Ghana’s precious shea kernels, the Nuts for Growth factory has a capacity of 300 tons per day. And it isn’t just a pull for job seekers in the north, who historically have moved south to look for work. It also helps link Dora’s network of 80,000 rural shea collectors to the international market.
“The opportunities are limited here,” Dora explains. “Growing up, we didn’t have enough universities here. So you are limited if you don’t go to training college, to polytechnic or nursing. We are all queuing to get the same jobs. So you need to create the job. I have developed this sense of entrepreneurship with the women to see that you don’t have to wait for those opportunities. You can grow something. You can raise animals, farm, and employ somebody. So we all don’t put too much pressure on jobs that don’t exist, or migrate to areas that are equally struggling.”
An Untapped Market
In 2023, the shea butter market was valued at $2.75 billion, and it continues to grow. In West Africa, Ghana stands out as the leading exporter of unrefined shea butter, and the country has made significant strides to strengthen its production.
The country’s shea value chain, however, remains rife with inefficiencies, and Ghana’s place within the global shea industry remains primarily that of an exporter of unrefined butter.
Dora wanted to improve the situation. Nuts for Growth received a boost with a co-investment grant from USAID’s West Africa Trade & Investment Hub to transform into a large-scale, industrial processor of shea kernels.
International demand for high-quality shea butter means that Nuts for Growth needs a constant supply of shea kernels. The women in Dora’s network now have a stable buyer offering fair prices for the shea they collect.
Instead of taking small batches of shea butter to local markets and hoping to sell enough to pay for transportation home, these women can depend on the Nuts for Growth buyers to buy their nuts at regular intervals based on transparent market prices.
Increasing impact, boosting livelihoods
However, Dora’s commitment to her network goes beyond mere economic transactions. She created the Women for Change collective to provide training and support to women shea collectors. This strategic initiative not only enhances efficiency and quality within the supply chain but also improves the conditions and opportunities available to rural women.
Women for Change educates women on effective shea kernel preparation and storage techniques, enabling the factory to maximize oil extraction for butter. The collective also provides vehicles that facilitate the transportation of full sacks of shea from distant fields back to the village—the women can spend more time collecting and less time carrying heavy bags of kernels on their backs. They give women protective gear that keeps them safe from scorpions and snakes in the shea forests.
Women for Change also supports rural women by offering pre-financing options that enable them to start soya farms and repay their loans with the proceeds from their harvests.
Some women can focus on subsistence farming to help keep the community fed while others spend their time working in the shea fields and soya farms.
Furthermore, they provide efficient stoves that utilize biofuel or small branches, reducing smoke inhalation and minimizing the need to cut down valuable shea trees for firewood.
Drawing from experience
Dora has not only revolutionized the shea industry but has also improved the lives of rural women, providing them with economic stability, better working conditions, and newfound prospects for a brighter future.
“My grandparents and my parents could pick the shea, process it, trade on it and could end up with not too much, but at least enough to pay my school fees, get school books, my uniform and food,” Dora says.
Nuts for Growth and Women for Change are allowing shea to mean more for Ghana’s northern communities that depend on it.
“Shea, we need to protect it,” Dora says. “We need to bring it out. We need to be loud about it so that other countries can also tap into it globally so that they can even help us to unleash the true potential of shea butter.”
Dora plans to increase the membership of Women for Change from 80,000 to about 300,000 over the next five years with continuing support from USAID.
About This Story
Shea butter is a prized commodity around the world, serving as a vital raw material for the food and cosmetic industries. It is also an essential income-generating resource for women across West Africa. The USAID West Africa Trade & Investment Hub uses a private-sector approach to create jobs and increase trade between the United States and West Africa.
In December 2021, the Trade Hub awarded a $980,000 co-investment grant to Nuts for Growth to support its transformation into a large-scale, inclusive industrial processor of shea kernels and soya using state-of-the-art processing technology.
Photos and video by Jim Huylebroek for West Africa Trade & investment Hub
Story by Pariesa Brody, West Africa Trade & investment Hub