Niger State and Shea nuts
Niger State Governor Abubakar Sani Bello said recently that the state loses $80m annually due to lack of standardised practices of harvesting, processing, packaging and marketing of Shea nuts. Bello had visited Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Chief Audu Ogbeh to discuss ways of maximising the state’s agricultural potentials. He bemoaned a situation where […]
Niger State Governor Abubakar Sani Bello said recently that the state loses $80m annually due to lack of standardised practices of harvesting, processing, packaging and marketing of Shea nuts. Bello had visited Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Chief Audu Ogbeh to discuss ways of maximising the state’s agricultural potentials. He bemoaned a situation where Shea butter taken from Niger State is moved to Ghana and exported to other parts of the world as if it was produced in other West African countries other than Nigeria.
Governor Bello has identified a very important natural resource in the Shea tree. It grows widely and naturally in the wild and usually yields its first fruit when it is 20 years old. It can take up to 50 years to mature and once productive, it will continue to bear fruits up until its 200th year. It is valued because of the Shea from the Shea nut. Its butter extract is a complex, slightly yellowish or ivory-coloured fat that is widely used in cosmetics as a moisturizer, salve or lotion. Shea butter is used as cooking oil, as wax, for hairdressing, for candle-making, and also as an ingredient in medicinal ointments. Shea butter is also used in the chocolate industry as a substitute for cocoa butter.
Shea nut is in high demand in the international market mainly for its butter, which is a substitute for cocoa butter in the production of chocolate. There is also increasing demand for Shea butter in pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. Shea tree also produces copious amounts of sap, an important raw material for the gum and rubber industry. Although it has many industrial applications, Shea’s production, processing and handling are still not well developed in this country.
The Shea value chain (planting, harvesting, processing and marketing) can provide employment and business opportunities to Nigerians mostly in the Shea tree belt. There is therefore the need to understudy the value chain in order to identify the constraints and challenges and proffer solutions. The measure of the long- term prospect of Shea products in any nation includes research and development, improvement of Shea productivity and product quality, transfer of technology, diversification and improvement of processing technology and the tree has a unique resource for poverty alleviation and employment generation for both rural women and youth.
Given the enormous potentials of this tree resource, Governor Bello deserves praise for identifying it as a major product that could help his state’s economy in this period when all talk is about economic diversification. Under our current constitutional arrangements, agriculture is the responsibility of all three tiers of government. So, while Bello was right to run to the Agriculture Minister for help, there are many things that his state government on its own can do to develop this vital resource with or without federal help.
As industrial challenges go, agro-processing is relatively simple. Convincing industrialists about the value of Shea butter should be easy because it is a well researched field and its value in cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries is already well known. There is however an added challenge in that most of the products may be destined for the export market. In which case, all deliberate effort must be made to keep abreast of the foreign market’s legal and technical requirements of processing, chemical treatment, storage, packaging etc.
The most direct route forward is to attract reputable industrial investors to take over from here and establish the necessary industrial and marketing infrastructure. Niger State government can play an important role here by providing basic infrastructure and even stepping in to guarantee bank loans. It should however not try to manage the industry because experience has shown that Nigerian governments at all levels are very poor managers of commercial and industrial projects. We urge Governor Bello to take up this challenge so that by this time next year, Niger State will be reaping huge benefits from its Shea tree resources.