SHEA butter is far more than a cosmetic luxury. For thousands of Nigerian women, it is survival, dignity, and the heartbeat of household economies.
Last week, the Federal Government announced a six-month suspension on the export of raw shea nuts, the foundation of a multi-billion-dollar beauty and wellness industry.
The justification sounds noble: strengthen local processing, build industries, and expand Nigeria’s share in a $6.5 billion global market where we currently hold a meagre 1%, despite producing 40% of the world’s raw nuts.
On paper, this is visionary. Why export raw materials when we can refine them and earn billions more? Why let others profit from what our soil produces when we can create jobs, factories, and wealth here?
But behind the fine print lies a painful question: who really benefits from this ban?
For women in Kwara, Niger, Zamfara, and across Nigeria’s shea belt, shea processing is not an industry on a policy paper, it is daily, back-breaking work.
From cracking nuts at dawn, to boiling, pounding, and churning by firelight, to waiting endlessly for the butter to solidify, it is women’s sweat turned into gold.
Generations have depended on it: school fees, food, hospital bills, clothing, and survival itself are tied to shea butter sales. Women without factories, without machines, without government loans, just mortar, pestle, firewood, and determination.
Now, with a single announcement, their fragile economy is at risk of collapse.
As a regular user, I remember when a litre of shea butter cost ₦900 to ₦1,500. Today, that same litre costs between ₦8,500 and ₦9,000 and that is buying directly from producers in Niger State. Add middlemen, and prices soar even higher.
It isn’t just shea. Neem oil, sesame oil, and other natural products have all become luxury items in struggling households. What was once sustenance has turned into privilege.
If large corporations and middlemen seize this ban as an opportunity to control the market, what hope remains for the women at the very bottom, the true backbone of the trade?
It is easy for officials to talk about “revenue growth” and “industrial expansion.” But policies are not lived in boardrooms; they are lived in the homes of Fatima, who pays her daughter’s WAEC fees with shea sales, or Hauwa, who buys malaria drugs for her sick child from her butter earnings.
Will the government’s policy help Fatima and Hauwa? Or will it widen the gap, leaving women with sweat-stained hands and empty pockets while middlemen and corporations cash in?
If Nigeria truly wishes to transform the shea sector, banning exports is not enough. The government must invest directly in women: provide access to credit and soft loans, establish cooperative processing centers, distribute modern tools and machines and create fair trade policies that protect women from exploitation.
Without these, the ban will not grow the economy, it will only shrink women’s wallets and silence their voices.
At its core, this is not just about shea nuts or shea butter. It is about whether government policies will empower or erase women, the very women whose sweat sustains households and communities.
If their hustle dies, we lose more than an industry. We lose the pulse of survival, the rhythm of resilience, and the dignity of everyday labour.
When shea turns from sustenance into luxury, it is not just inflation, it is the sound of women’s sweat being priced out of reach, their voices muted, their hustle sacrificed at the altar of national ambition.
Voice just cleared its throat!
- Kabara, is a writer and public commentator. Her syndicated column, Voice, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays. She can be reached on hafceekay01@gmail.com.