Rural women process and sell shea butter

Good day, welcome to Radio Jigiya, broadcasting from Zégoua, Mali on 100 MHZ. We are a private radio station that broadcasts information for rural communities. Dear listeners in Mali, in the Ivory Coast, and in Burkina Faso, today we present an interview with the President of the Fakocourou Women’s Binkadi Association, located 35 kilometres from Zégoua. Eight hundred and fifty women are members of this association. We will speak today with Ms. Ouattara Bintou Ouattara, who presides over the association. Madame President, we would first like to thank you for talking with us.

Thanks should also go to Radio Jigiya for striving for the well-being of our people.

Your association is involved with processing shea nuts. How are the shea nuts harvested?

When shea nuts are ripe, the wind blows them off the tree and onto the ground. Otherwise, we climb the shea trees and collect them by hand.

What does the nut look like?

The nut’s shell is wrapped in a soft and very succulent green fruit. Inside this shell is the seed from which shea butter is extracted.

After collecting the shea fruits, what do you do with the nuts?

We remove the green fruit, either eating it or throwing it away. We then place the nuts in a simple rural oven built for the process and heated with wood. The heat helps to separate the shell from the seed.

What is done with the seed once it is removed from the shell?

The seeds are pounded with a mortar and pestle to transform them into paste. For example, to pound 15 kilograms of shea butter, 10 women work for at least three hours. But the lack of mechanized mills seriously limits our production. We often travel eight kilometres by foot or by donkey to reach a mill in a neighbouring village. Imagine how much time we would gain if we had a mechanized mill and did not lose half a day’s work by walking, not to mention all the lost energy. Furthermore, it is our responsibility among other things to collect the water, educate the children, collect wood from the bush, clean, cook, and clean the yard. Easy access to a mill would help us greatly.

Is the paste processed further?

The reddish-brown paste is placed in a bowl or container, then poured into hot water in small quantities, continually mixing it in order to extract an oily white paste. This procedure continues for about 48 hours until the reddish-brown paste no longer produces the oily white paste. The white paste is then heated in a cooking pot over the fire, where it liquefies to become shea oil. If you keep the oil in the open air or in a cool area for about 24 hours, it will become shea butter.

Are other products made from the shea nuts?

If you mix the oily reddish-brown residues from the butter-making process with tree ashes, you can make a kind of soap, called in the Bambara language of West Africa, “Tulu djiè safunè” . Also, this reddish-brown paste can be mixed with banco to make bricks used to build houses (Note: banco is soil mixed with water). These bricks are very resistant to rainwater. This same reddish-brown paste can also be diluted and used to paint banco houses. It should be noted that we mix these pastes by hand, a process that takes hours because there are no machines.

What do you do with the shea butter?

(In a happy voice) Some of it is consumed in the household, which helps women reduce the cost of buying condiments. Shea butter is used to beautify the skin, especially for newborns. It can also be added to a piece of tissue or strand of cotton to make a traditional lamp to light a room.

Do the women of the association sell the butter as well?

The majority of shea butter is sold in the village on weekly market days. It is sold by the kilo. Our association can produce over twelve tonnes of butter in a good season. The rate at which the butter is sold varies greatly but is always low, which prevents us from meeting all our families’ needs. Buyers take the butter to urban centres, other African countries, and even Europe. But the quantity we produce in a season could be doubled if we had tools or machinery. A slump in the price of the butter is fatal for us women. This is because we are responsible for our children – for their education, health, clothing, school supplies and many other things. We rural women contribute greatly to our households, more than the men. Men simply make babies and provide us with cereals. But they do not give us money to buy the condiments such as oil, salt, and pepper that we need to prepare meals with these cereals. It is up to the women to buy them. The women must also pound the cereals by hand because we lack machinery. (She cries.)

Ms. Outtara, we sympathize with your suffering. (Pause) Do you have any last comments, Madame President?

We invite Radio Jigiya to increase your partnership with women so that they can be heard everywhere and benefit from potential sponsors who could also help them. If we had appropriate tools, we could sell more shea butter or produce better quality butter, both of which would increase our income. Women would have more time for domestic work and taking care of their children, which would give them a healthy and balanced social and economic life. We thank the staff of Radio Jigiya for offering us air time over the last year. Our association was formed seven years ago, but for six years there was no one we could speak to. No one even knew we existed! Thanks to Radio Jigiya, the women now feel they are useful and they now understand the importance of shea. They understand that good shea production can allow them to have a better future. We pray to Allah the Almighty that this collaboration with Radio Jigiya will always be our goodwill ambassador to the world.

Thank you, Madame President. (Pause) This was the Zone Rurale program. Thank you for listening and good-bye.