How They Make Shea Butter

You know it’s in all the finest lotions and creams, but what is it, and where does it come from?  Well, I have become somewhat knowledgeable on the subject of late, since shea butter comes from West Africa, the only place the slow-growing karité tree thrives.   The tree itself is valued for its wood, which is used for ceremonial musical instruments and building materials, but the greater wealth is in the oil contained in its nuts.  

Much like peanuts, the nuts can be roasted and transformed into many different products, but unlike peanuts, one does not use the entire nut.  A lengthy process is required to separate the oil from the rest of the nut meat and cook it down into butter.  The many steps in the process are strictly ‘women’s work,’ and they are performed manually.  With the growing appreciation ofshea butter as an additive in cosmetics and foodstuffs (the EU has approved the addition of up to 3% shea butter in chocolate), there is increased interest in modernizing the production process and mechanizing some of the steps.  Yes, I have an ulterior motive for telling you about this;  I am trying to help the women in this area set up a cooperative with a storage and processing center.  So please read on!

Shea nuts look like buckeyes!  The nut meats are about the size of nutmeg.

Karité trees are particularly abundant in the south west region of Burkina Faso.  If they didn’t take at least 30 years to start producing fruit, someone would probably be busy planting them throughout the tropics.  As it is, the forestry and agricultural services in BF are facing a challenge to maintain the karité population.  

The small-egg-sized fruit ripens at the beginning of the rainy season in June.  The quarter-inch or so of sweet pulp that covers the nut is delicious.  It can be used for jams and preserves, but this is not something the people here are interested in.  Those who have trees on their land gather the ripe fruit from the ground and remove the pulp so they can prepare the nuts for processing. People do eat some of the pulp, but much of it is fed to the pigs.

Most of the work is accomplished in 'the position.'

Through tedious manual labor performed by women and children, the nuts are boiled, shelled and roasted, interspersed with periods of being spread out on tarps to dry in the sun and quickly gathered in if rain threatens.The shells are used as fuel or composted for the gardens.  The nuts are then bagged and stored until time is available for further processing after all other crops have been harvested.  Lacking a means of storing their nuts, women are forced to sell them in July when prices are low.  Others who wish to process the nuts have to buy them in December when the price is at its highest.  The storage facility envisioned for the cooperative will benefit both the collectors and the processors among its members.

These nuts were ground in a mill, ready for processing in the tubs.

For want of a mill, women will pound and grind the nuts in large wooden mortars.  Two or three will pound away to the rhythm provided by others who sing and clap their encouragement and stand ready to take their turns with the heavy wooden pestles.

Teamwork

With the addition of warm water, the women are able to beat the ground nuts into a paste using their hands, their arms, their backs, well, just about every muscle available, urged along by the laughter, clapping and songs of their sisters.  (I tried beating the nuts, too, for about two minutes.  I longed desperately for my electric drill and its paint mixing attachment.  The effect of the oil on my hands and arms was better than a spa treatment, though!)  It’s a social event.  It’s fun!

The women then add cold water to the mix and pat the surface of the soupy paste to help the oil rise and solidify while the waste sediment sinks to the bottom of the tub.  Not even the waste is wasted.  It can be dried and pressed into briquettes for fuel, and the waste water is used in construction.  If I understood correctly, it strengthens concrete and/or serves as a sealant for mud-brick walls.

As the butter comes together on the surface, it is washed in a series of tepid-then-cold water baths until the water runs clear. 

In a final step, the butter is boiled and clarified.  Once cooled, it is pale yellowish white in color and has a smooth texture and not unpleasant odor.  In this state it is ready to be used in cooking or for skin care or soap making.  That would mean it’s ‘third choice’ on the BF quality scale.  Better controlled and more highly mechanized methods could help the women produce second and even first choice cosmetic quality shea butter with which they could compete in international markets.

What are the virtues of the karité tree and shea derivatives?  In addition to, or possibly repeating those mentioned above, the pulp is rich in sugar, phosphorus, zinc, magnesium, calcium and potassium, and can be used to make jam, ice cream or vinegar.  The shells can be used as fuel or fertilizer.  The oil and butter of the nuts contain olein and stearin (sorry if that’s French).  The butter accelerates lactation and is used in the care of broken bones; they massage babies and new mothers with it.  The nut waste is used as fuel, fertilizer and pig fodder, and it can be burned to produce potash.  The waste water fights termites; it is used in the fabrication of bricks and terra cotta; pigs like to drink it.  The leaves of the karité contain essential oils for perfume; they are eaten as salad; they are used to treat wounds.  The flowers are sought out by bees (BF honey is yummy).  The roots have medicinal value as antibiotics.  The termite-resistant wood is prized by artisans.  The caterpillars (big fuzzy ones) that infest the trees after the fruit has fallen are a great protein-rich delicacy (so they say).  The trees themselves improve the soil and provide shade while beautifying the landscape. 

The nice uniformly round trees are mangos, but the rest are karité, including the young trees in the foreground.

There are more cultural, traditional, health/personal care, and nutritional uses, as you can imagine.  In one village I visited, families mix hair shaved from their babies’ heads with shea butter and deposit it in a small stoneware pot.  Each family has its own pot in the local baby hair/shea butter repository.  I’m not sure why they do this, but obviously they aren’t able to get their kids’ first shoes bronzed. 

Each family's pot has distinctive markings.  I worry about the broken ones.

If you are as fascinated by all of this as I am, or even if you’re not, please tune in again or watch fb and e-mail to see how you can help me get the storage and processing center up and running.  Shea butter will put a lot of kids through school!  Go karité!  …and I’ll be forever indebted to anyone who can give me an English name for this tree, other than the shea butter tree, which is what it’s called in German.