Not a Simple Nut: Making shea butter in Mali

Text and photos by Claudine Desjardins
Translation by Johanna Kratz

In July 2006, I visited the small town of Oulessebougou in Mali's Sikasso region on behalf of the international solidarity organization known as the Réseau citoyen de solidarité Iciéla . At the time, Iciéla was running a project to establish a multi-stakeholder cooperative between Quebec and Mali to develop organic, fair-trade cotton and shea butter. One of my projects during this visit was to produce shea butter together with the women who were to become members of the co-operative. I had to explain how the project worked and the related fair-trade bonus to them and, above all, discover how to make shea butter from a simple nut.

In Bambara (the main language spoken in Mali), shea butter is called chitoulou, chi meaning shea, and tolou, butter. The production of shea butter is primarily a women's activity, from the gathering of the shea fruit to their processing. The sale of chitoulou at the market provides women with additional income for their families. Harvesting takes place between June and September, when the trees abound with small, green, round fruit. Although only the seed of this fruit, the Shea nut, is used to produce Shea butter, children love to eat the fruit, which in colour and texture slightly resembles an avocado, but tastes sweeter. The processing of the nuts involves a number of stages.

Firstly, the nuts have to be dried, a delicate process, as it will guarantee the quality of the butter. Often, women will dry the nuts and then boil and smoke them so that they keep for longer. During the harvesting period, women habitually do not have the time to process the nuts, as it coincides with the rainy season and the time of year when women have to work in the fields. When one buys shea butter at a West African market and the
butter has a greyish colour and smells bad, the nuts used to produce it were likely boiled, smoked and buried.

Second, the nuts are ground to make a powder of the texture of cocoa. At this point, the processing can begin. Women churn the butter by hand using both hot and cold water. During this process, white foam will appear: the fat of the nut. The foam is skimmed and then boiled to produce shea oil, which, while
cooling, hardens into butter.

Shea butter is used quite differently in Africa and Quebec. In Quebec, it is usually processed and used to make cosmetics (lipstick, body moisturizer, etc), while in Africa, women tend to use it in its unprocessed form, as fat for cooking (to replace oil) or as medicine (to reduce scarring, decongest a stuffy nose, etc).

A plain nut and a majestic tree that require a balancing act and a great deal of know-how to protect them.