Sourcing Chad · Chebe Powder, Ambunu, Lake Chad Spirulina

Chad is the geographic centre of our catalog. We source three flagship ingredients from three different parts of the country: chebe powder and ambunu leaves from the Guéra region in the centre, Lake Chad Dihé spirulina from the Kanem region in the west, and the cultural framework behind everything from the Sahelian belt that crosses the country’s entire latitude. McBride Research Laboratories travelled with us to film here in March 2023.

Why Chad

Chad is one of the world’s most underserved sourcing geographies in the natural beauty and wellness category. The country has no coastline, limited industrial infrastructure, and exports almost exclusively through Cameroon, Nigeria, or our preferred route through Benin via Cotonou. This logistical difficulty is precisely why most natural-ingredient suppliers do not source from Chad — and why the brokers who do, charge a premium for ingredients of indifferent quality.

We do it differently. We work directly with cooperatives, we travel to the producing villages, we pay producers before the batch leaves Chad, and we manage the export logistics through Benin ourselves. The result is access to ingredients (authentic chebe, traditional Dihé spirulina) that the market structurally under-supplies, at a price tier that reflects fair payment to producers without a middleman markup.

Guéra region (chebe + ambunu)

Guéra is the heart of the Bassara Arab haircare tradition. Rocky, semi-arid, predominantly Muslim and Arab, the region’s women have practiced the chebe routine for generations. Our partner there is the Guéra Women’s Cooperative, which produces both ingredients in the same traditional methods: hand-roasted, hand-ground, blended to the historical recipe.

The cooperative’s work has long been invisible in global beauty markets. Our partnership with them has co-funded a drinking-water borehole, supported reconstruction of agricultural granaries after a 2022 drought, and continues to direct a portion of every sale into community infrastructure rather than marketing copy. Documentation of this work is available on request; we do not publish photos of named individuals without explicit consent each cycle.

Lake Chad / Kanem (Dihé spirulina)

Lake Chad has shrunk by roughly 90% since the 1960s, but the alkaline ponds at its margins still produce the same Arthrospira platensis spirulina that the Kanembu women have harvested for centuries. Traditionally, the women skim the surface biomass with simple woven mats, dry it in flat cakes (dihé) on rooftops, and grind it for food use. Our partner is the Dihé Cooperative of Bol, the principal export-oriented producer organisation in the region.

This is the oldest documented spirulina production tradition on Earth — predating modern cultivation by hundreds of years. We sell it precisely because that provenance is not reproducible by industrial algae farms anywhere else.

Export logistics

All Chad-sourced ingredients route through Cotonou, Benin, for export. Land transit from Guéra to Cotonou is approximately 1,800 km and takes 7–14 days depending on dry/rainy season. Phytosanitary inspection is done at Cotonou by the Direction de la Protection des Végétaux du Bénin. Lead time from order confirmation to ship is typically 14–21 days for Chad-origin ingredients vs. 5–10 days for Benin-warehoused stock. See phytosanitary certificate process.

Ingredients we source from this region

Chebe powder wholesale · Ambunu leaves wholesale · Lake Chad spirulina wholesale

Request a wholesale quote for any ingredient from this region, or email us directly with your sourcing question. We respond within two business days.