Rooted in Resilience with Shea Butter: Meet Gifty
23rd April 2025
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The building is low and single-storey, nestled in a sea of green. Towering trees sway gently overhead, their branches alive with birds and insects, all trilling gently beneath the midday sun. From the village path, a group of women are approaching, walking with determination. Inside, is a host of new machinery – tools and equipment owned by the community. Today, they will come together to make shea butter.
In West Africa, shea butter is often known as women’s gold for its power to boost incomes and support livelihoods. The shea tree is a valuable resource: its nuts yield a rich, nourishing butter that’s prized by skincare brands around the world. But transforming shea nuts into butter is not easy: the trees can take 25 years to mature, and traditional processing methods are time-consuming and labour-intensive - taking weeks of hard work to produce just a few tubs.
But this is beginning to change.
Across Africa’s dryland regions, communities are sharing knowledge, resources, and tools that are helping to streamline the process.
And at the heart of it all is the shea tree: a native species being protected and preserved, both for its economic value and for the health of the land.
“Now, I can just go there and do what I need with ease.”
Gifty Amadou sits in the shade. A mother of two and smallholder farmer from the Chakundo community in Ghana, today, she is meeting with the rest of the women in her cooperative group.
Before the project, Gifty’s days were long and physically demanding. Like many women in her community, she relied on manual methods to make shea butter. This complex process of steps can take weeks to complete to transform the hard nuts into the distinctive yellow shea butter.
“The challenges I was facing was that I had to use a mortar and pound the shea,” she explains. “After pounding I had to walk from here to Tatale [12 km]. You could not do it all in a day... by then it’s already late.”
Since the project came, you can take a day and finish everything.
For Gifty, who uses crutches, this journey was physically exhausting and impacted her ability to produce enough shea butter to sell.
“Before when I did that, I couldn’t make shea butter in a day manually. That thing alone was a difficult task for me.”
But since joining the community-led Tree Aid project, everything changed. The group received new tools - roasters, crushers, mills, and training to use them.
“Since the project came in, you can take a day and finish everything. Because we have the roaster, you can roast it here, the crusher is here... the mill is here. So, within a day, one person can finish it, without a stretch.”
For Gifty, it’s more than about tools and how much shea butter she can made. Access to the right equipment has given her a sense of independence.
“I feel very happy,” Gifty smiles and laughs. “Because I can’t walk. The tools are here so I can just go there and do what I need with ease.”
“I now have friends; I can share ideas”
At its heart, this community-led initiative brings people together to learn from one another, providing connection through shared experience.
Before the project, Gifty often kept to herself.
“Before, I felt shy to even go out, because of my condition.”
Joining the cooperative, this feeling began to shift. Regular meetings and training sessions quickly became a place of connection.
“Now, in the last three years coming out for the project, I have made friends with other people… Through our meetings we discuss and share ideas, so through that I have been able to improve my life.”
“Through support of Tree Aid. I now have friends, I can share ideas, people come to me and share ideas.”
Growing stronger roots—together
Gifty’s story is just one example of how growing sustainable tree-based incomes can be transformative, especially for women in dryland communities. By investing in traditional knowledge and combining it with new tools, training, and collaboration, projects like this are helping to create long-term impact.
With communities leading the way, shea butter as an income source is leaving lasting impact on people and the trees they rely on.