2 September 2010 Last updated at 08:18

In pictures: Making shea butter

Making shea butter in Zoosali, Ghana, a photo gallery by Ruth Leavett, Gaia Foundation

Shea butter, popular worldwide for use in cosmetics, is a vital resource for the women of Zoosali, a farming village in northern Ghana. They use the money earned from selling the nuts which make shea butter to send their children to school.

The women pick the shea nuts when they have dropped from the trees planted on their farms. The nuts can be harvested from May through to July, before the rainy season begins.

The whole process is long and physically hard work. First, the outer skin of the fruit is removed on the farm. Adamu, pictured here, goes to pick shea nuts as soon as the sun rises, so she can get them before anyone else.

Many women carry their nuts long distances from the farms. Ayisha's shea nut trees are 6km (about four miles) east of Zoosali on her husband's farm, where the land is more fertile. The walk home in the midday heat is exhausting.

Once the nuts are brought back to the compound, they have to be boiled. Boiling the shea nut makes the shell easier to break, and the seed inside will be ready for making shea butter.

After boiling, the nuts have to be dried. Even aged 70, the village chief's third wife Ma Hajia is still harvesting shea nuts.

After the nuts are pounded, they are separated from the broken shells by hand. It is a long and fiddly process, but is often a social activity. The women do it as they rest from the farm. The discarded shells are used as fuel for cooking.

Sanatu is one of just two women in the village who make the butter. She learnt the process from her mother. After pounding the nuts, roasting them, grinding and beating with water, the fat left is boiled to separate the clear oil that is the shea butter.

As the oil cools into shea butter it is beaten to make it smooth. Sanatu's daughter has learned the skill by observing and helping at every stage. Here she gives the final product a last stir.

Shea butter is used in Ghana as soap, for softening skin, for keeping warm in the dry season and for treating sprains and inflammations. But in Zoosali it is mostly for food. Okashetu is preparing "snkaafa kpaligu", a local rice dish made with butter.

The increased global demand for shea butter as a cosmetic has so far only benefited the women who work in the few foreign-funded processing plants in the area. Zoosali's women only produce the butter for local consumption.

Local people have been making shea butter for more than 100 years, but as more children leave Zoosali to work in city jobs, their indigenous knowledge is in danger of being lost. (By Ruth Leavett, Gaia Foundation/African Biodiversity Network)

Africa

In pictures: Making shea butter

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