30 July 2018

Valorisation of shea butter in Bamingui-Bangoran

As part of the reinforcement of the Community Eco-Development Fund (FICED) in the Bamingui-Bangoran, ECOFAUNE + finances microprojects focused on the valorisation of biodiversity products. Between June 20th and 28th, a specialist from Burkina Faso’s Association “CEAS” held a training course aimed at providing participants with practical and theoretical knowledge on improved techniques for the collection, processing and storage of shea nuts and on the production of high quality shea butter.
The training strengthened the technical capacities of the women’s groups in Kotissako and Bamingui involved in the valorisation of shea by: i) supplying the groups with three tools for manually extracting shea butter (manual crusher, manual churn and filter manual butter); (ii) the training of groups on good harvesting, processing and conditioning practices of shea kernels and techniques for extracting shea butter; (iii) the training of women’s groups on the use of the equipment.
At the end of the training the 19 women produced 36 liters of high quality butter! More importantly, the training allowed the women, thanks to the “churning” technique, to achieve an average transformation yield of 30% (100 kg of nuts to obtain 30 kg of butter) whereas traditionally the extraction by cooking gave an inferior quality shea butter and a yield that did not exceed 15%.
The women of the two groups will be accompanied in the coming months by the ECOFAUNE social development coordinator, which will consolidate their capacity on the sustainable use of this important resource of the North RCA biodiversity.