Strategies for Gender Equality and Effectiveness in the Field

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Burkina Faso: Fair Share for Women Shea Producers
By Emily Sollie, Director, Communication & Media Relations, Lutheran World Relief

For centuries, women in West Africa have collected, processed and used shea for cooking oil, body lotion and medicine. In the growing global market for shea butter, in which the product is used in lotions and other personal-care products, consumers pay up to 84 times the price paid to local shea butter producers, due to markups by refiners, middlemen, exporters, importers and retailers. Producers face a number of challenges when attempting to build the favorable production, marketing and credit conditions that could improve their situations.

Lutheran World Relief, along with its partner organization DAKUPA, is working with two women’s groups in Burkina Faso to help strengthen the organizational, technical and financial capacities of women to enable them to manage their own shea butter micro-enterprises and secure steady, long-term incomes for both their cooperatives and themselves. Through technical assistance, training and a revolving loan fund, the women are improving their production and marketing techniques and linking with diverse new markets.

The project, which started last year and is scheduled to run through 2009, has served as a model for other women in the region who hope to begin their own shea butter production units. The project is already having a ripple effect, as a group of women from Mali recently visited the project in Burkina Faso to gain technical knowledge on expanding their own businesses.