Cooperative profile · Burkina Faso
Bobo Shea Producers Union
Twelve village groups around Bobo-Dioulasso, roughly 320 women members. Stone-ground unrefined Grade A shea butter, with their own free-fatty-acid lab.
Members
~320 women
Region
Hauts-Bassins
Product
Unrefined Grade A shea
Partner since
2022
Premium paid
+22% above gate
The union
The Bobo Shea Producers Union is an umbrella structure that joins twelve village shea-processing groups around Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Each village group runs its own day-to-day operation; the union coordinates buying, lab testing, and export packaging through a shared press-house and lab built in 2019. Around 320 women are full members, several hundred more are seasonal nut-collectors paid into the system.
Their process
Karité nuts are gathered in May and June, parboiled, sun-dried, cracked, and the kernels roasted on low heat. Stone-grinding turns the roasted kernels into paste, and cold-water hand-kneading floats the butter out. The union’s lab measures free fatty acid (target < 1 percent for Grade A) and peroxide value at the press-house before any lot ships.
What our partnership looks like
- 22 percent above the regional gate price.
- 40 percent of each season pre-financed at the gathering window.
- Co-financed upgrade of the union lab in 2024: digital titration kit and a benchtop refractometer.
- Literacy program contribution for member women in the slow season.
- Direct shipping from Bobo to Albuquerque, no broker chain.
How we audit
Each season’s first lot is third-party tested by an Accra lab (heavy metals, pesticide residues, aflatoxin) and re-tested by a US-side lab in Albuquerque. The union’s own free-fatty-acid result is required on every batch certificate; we cross-check on first-lot.