Shea butter protects against sunburn, so is a useful ingredient in sun-protection or post-sun-exposure products. It also encourages wound healing and soothes skin irritation. Shea butter is stable and permits the fast release of medicaments; it can therefore be used as a base for suppositories and ointments.

Shea butter is traditionally used in medicines, particularly for the preparation of skin ointments, and is used to treat inflammation, rashes in children, dermatitis, sunburn, chapping, irritation, ulcers and as a rub for rheumatism. Leaf decoctions are used for stomach-ache, headache and as an eye lotion. Roots and root bark are ground to a paste and taken orally to cure jaundice, or are boiled and pounded to treat chronic sores and girth sores in horses. They are also used for the treatment of diarrhoea and stomach-ache.
A bark decoction is used in a bath to facilitate childbirth in Cote d’Ivoire; it is drunk to encourage lactation after delivery, although in northern Nigeria such a concoction is said to be lethal. A bark infusion is used as an eyewash as a footbath to help extract jiggers, and to neutralize the venom of the spitting cobra. Infusions have been taken for the treatment of leprosy in Guinea-Bissau and for gastric problems as well as for diarrhoea and dysentery. Macerated with the bark of Ceiba pentandra and salt, infusions have been used to treat cattle with worms in Senegal and Guinea.
The American Shea Butter Institute Surveyed 463 Regular Users of Shea Butter The top 10 benefits were uncovered as:
- Moisturizer for Dry Skin
- Eczema cream
- Blemish cream
- For Softer Smoother skin
- For Burns
- Wrinkle Reduction cream
- Moisturizer for Dry Hair
- Shaving cream
- Anti-itch cream
- Skin Abrasions

Other uses

Shea butter is used as a base for many commercial preparations. Increasingly, cosmetics, especially those that prevent skin drying and good-quality lipsticks, use shea butter. As a result, cosmetic industries in the Sahel and elsewhere market this ingredient in many soap, shampoo and skin-cream preparations. Today, Vitellaria is the 2nd most important oil crop in Africa, after oil palm, but it takes on primary importance in areas in West Africa where annual precipitation is less than 1000 mm and therefore unsuitable for oil palm.
The residual meal of the seed cake is applied to the exterior walls of mud huts, doors, windows and traditional beehives, in a similar way to shea butter, to provide a waterproof layer.

Food : Shea butter extracted from the nuts is one of the most affordable and widely used vegetable fats in the Sahel. Today, shea nuts are important internationally and are sold to European and Japanese food industries. The refined fat is sold as baking fat, margarine and other fatty spreads under various trade names and finds increasing use in various foodstuffs. Shea butter has a fatty composition similar to that of cocoa butter, so is often used as a substitute for cocoa, and in pastry because it makes a highly pliable dough.

Traditionally prepared unpuri-fied, shea butter is sold in ‘loaves’ in markets and, if properly prepared and wrapped in leaves, is resistant to oxidative rancidity and will keep for years if not exposed to air and heat. Nuts that have been cleaned and lightly sun dried without previous maceration yield a tasteless, odourless fat. Traditionally prepared shea butter, after refining, is also tasteless and odourless.
The edible fruit pulp constitutes 50-80% of the whole fruit. It is allowed to become slightly overripe before being eaten raw; it can also be eaten lightly cooked. Children eat the nuts raw, while the flowers are made into fritters by some ethnic groups.

Erosion control : It regenerates well, and is traditionally favoured and protected by farmers. As a result, it has played a significant role in soil and water conservation and environmental protection in semi-arid West Africa.
Soil improver: The husks of the seeds make a good mulch and fertilizer.

Pollution control : Studies on the by-products of shea-butter processing have shown that heavy-metal ions can be removed from aqueous solutions, for example waste water, using Vitellaria. Report by J. Ful
Sources : ICRAF AGROFORESTRY TREE DATABASE
www.vitaminstuff.com/supplements-shea-butter

Ways of Extracting Shea Butter
Extracting shea butter traditionally
The basic process is the traditional means of extracting which practiced in every house where shea is processed. Pick the nuts from the tree. Remove the external green pulp. One of the methods of removing is by burying the fruit in the ground for the pulp to ferment and fall off. Sun dry the nuts and smoke for 3 to 4 days. This help for long periods of storage. Crack, grill and pound to extract the butter.
Boil in water for a number of hours until the fresh shea butter rises to the surface. Scoop into gourds and allow to cool and set. This is all done by hand. Although this process does not produce mass shea butter, it is still the best way to extract because there is no need for chemicals or synthetic agents to be added to extract the butter. This is called Unrefined Shea Butter or Raw Shea Butter.

Extracting Shea Butter by Pressing
An expeller type press is used to crush the nuts of the shea butter. The shea nuts are pushed against the metal press. The movement is similar to a meat grinder. Then the shea butter is squeezed out of the nut by pressure. The end result is Unrefined Shea Butter or Raw Shea Butter.
This method is used by many African women these days because it helps them organize and produce more shea butter in less time. It does not involve any chemicals. It is simply a faster way of extracting without compromising the pure unrefined shea butter. This process cuts at least 3-5 hours off the traditional extraction time.

“There are big production companies exporting tons of shea butter,”

You attended a workshop in Ghana which had to do with Non Timber Forest Products and one of them was Shea nut, how are these nuts used in West Africa?
Shea nuts come from the shea tree and all the parts of the tree are useful. The leaves and the fruits are edible while the roots are medicinal. When the fruits are eaten, the seed is processed to have shea butter which is a big export commodity in most West African countries. It is used as body lotion and it is also used to produce soap.

Where is this shea in the North West Region and how the people using it ?
From studies undertaken by ICRAF, the best variety of shea is found in the North West and West Regions of Cameroon extending to Nigeria. We have shea in Mbiame area, Ako, Ndop and in most parts of Ndonga Mantung including Nkambe.

What opportunities are there for those who have this shea in the area ?
This is a plant that fruits in the dry season and we can say it is environmentally useful because it is one of the rare plants that is green in the dry season. We understand that farming is done in the North West during the dry season and the only use this fruit is to the people is that they consume the fruit during this farming period. Given that the leaves are also edible and it is the rare green plant during the dry season it becomes a very important commodity. We also talked about processing the seed to shea butter and processing it the North Westerner will have an edge because the variety here is the best. There is also the opportunity for geographical certification to protect the shea butter produced from shea nuts in the North West Region that will fetch huge incomes for the farmers both nationally and internationally.

How can you explain the fact that this is a multimillion market ?
While attending a workshop on natural product of Africa in Ghana recently, we observed that in West Africa, there are big production companies exporting tons of shea butter to Europe and Asia. We also observed that shea butter in Burkina Faso is already at the verge geographical indication certification placing it at a high level at the international market. Regionally, we have countries like Nigeria producing shea and it is also a big market for shea and so we do not doubt that producing it is Cameroon is a big opportunity.

How do farmers in this region begin to benefit from these opportunities when they do not know much about shea ?
SNV is beginning to do a diagnosis of the value chain to look at how far some groups are involved already processing. We will be able to look at the special distribution and from there we will look at awareness raising on the potentials and from there we will try to transfer the technology on the processing and storage. Later on we will lead the farmers to the different market opportunities by J.F.