Nigeria prohibits the export of shea nuts used in beauty creams for six months

Nigeria has announced a six -month ban on raw shea nuts from which many beauty creams are made.

This decision aims to make trade more lucrative while Nigeria loses by not producing a lot of shea butter locally.

The country produces almost 40% of the annual harvest in the world, but it represents only 1% of the global market of $ 6.5 billion (4.8 billion pounds sterling) – a vice -president of the situation Kashim Shettima describes as “unacceptable”.

The fruits harvested with shea nuts must be crushed, roasted and boiled to extract their oil to produce the shea butter used in cosmetics.

Butter is also used in the food industry in the production of certain candies such as chocolate and ice – and in pharmaceutical products.

The Karies grow in the wild of the West in East Africa – a large band known as “shea belt”. Small farmers, often women, plant them and also harvest them in these regions.

Shettima said that the temporary ban would allow Nigeria to go from a gross walnut exporter to a global supplier of refined shea products.

“It is about industrialization, rural transformation, gender empowerment and the expansion of the global commercial imprint of Nigeria,” said the vice-president during the announcement at State House in the capital, Abuja.

The short-term objective, he said, was to see Nigeria’s revenues from the fruit of shea nuts drop from $ 65 million to $ 300 million per year.

The Minister of Agriculture of Nigeria, Abubakar Kyari, said that the West African nation produces a harvest of 350,000 tonnes per year – with almost 25% of that which disappears on the borders of informal trade not regulated.

According to the agriculture expert, Dr Ahmed Ismail, a large part of the harvest comes from villages in the center of Nigeria.

“Many poor people cultivate the harvest and who count on him for subsistence have trouble getting out of it due to a lack of regulation, which means that they get so little despite his great international value,” the academic of the Federal University of Minna at the BBC told.

Farmers ignoring the true value of shea nuts were often exploited by businessmen who go to these distant regions to buy it at a lower cost, he explained.

“I went to a village and I saw shea nuts in heap and when I asked, they said that someone from the city came to buy and take them.”

Dr. Ismail said that the temporary ban was a bold step that should have been taken a long time ago – and should go hand in hand with better regulations.

“This will not only provide more jobs locally because refining will be carried out here, but will also improve government revenues,” he said.