CAPACITY BUILDING ON MARKETING, INTERNATIONAL LINKAGES AND EXPORT PROMOTION OF SHEA PRODUCTS FOR PROCESSORS ACROSS SHEA PRODUCING STATES.

Alhaji Sabo Nanono, the Minister of Ag­riculture and Rural Development emphasized that Nigeria is currently the world’s largest leading producer of Shea nuts with comparative advantage over its African neighbors.

The Minister was represented by the Deputy Director, Federal Department of Agriculture, Mr. Ukattah Bernard, who stated that Shea butter, generally known as “Women Gold” is a key raw material in cosmetic and the pharmaceutical industries.

The Theme of the workshop was ‘Building capacity of Shea farmers on Marketing, International linkages and Export promotion’. While welcoming participants at the workshop, he remarked that Nigeria as a nation was yet to exploit the full potentials of the Shea butter industry for employment generation, improve the livelihood of farmers who are predominantly women and children and to provide raw materials for food and pharmaceutical industries, earn foreign exchange, achieve food security and ensure environmental sustainability.

He went on to say that regardless of the benefits of Shea butter, the industry has not been well developed due to lack of knowledge and skills to develop formal small businesses with linkages involved in all the levels of the value chain from nut collectors to consumers and then ready for export. This workshop is therefore relevant as it will teach participants on linkages to exploit export opportunities because the current price per metric ton of Shea butter exceeds that for Shea kernels so that expanding Shea butter exports will contribute proportionally more to export earnings than greater levels of Shea kernel exports.