Burkina Faso sits in the heart of the West African “shea belt” — the latitudinal band stretching from Senegal through Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, and into central Africa where Vitellaria paradoxa grows wild. Bobo-Dioulasso, the country’s second city, is the regional centre of cooperative-organised shea production. Our partner there hand-presses Grade A unrefined shea butter using stone-ground methods that have not changed in three generations.
Why Bobo-Dioulasso
Bobo-Dioulasso is the West African city where pre-colonial shea trade traditions have most successfully preserved the cooperative production model. While shea butter is increasingly industrialised across the region (particularly in Ghana, where multi-national refineries dominate volume), the Bobo cooperative network has maintained the stone-grinding and hand-pressing methods that distinguish unrefined Grade A shea butter from the industrial product.
The distinction matters: industrial shea butter is typically extracted with hexane or other solvents, then deodorised, decolourised, and bleached to a uniform off-white product with no scent. Bobo cooperative shea butter retains the characteristic smoky-nutty scent of the original nut, ivory-yellow colour, and bioactive fraction (including catechins and tocopherols) that hexane extraction strips out.
Bobo Shea Producers Union
The Bobo Shea Producers Union is a women’s cooperative network. Members gather shea nuts during the rainy season harvest from wild-standing trees in producer-owned parklands. The nuts are cracked, roasted, ground on stone slabs, and the resulting paste is hand-kneaded until the butter separates. No hexane, no chemical solvents, no industrial centrifuge. Output is graded by colour, scent, and free fatty acid percentage; only the Grade A fraction enters our wholesale catalog.
Parkland sourcing — the “de facto organic” question
Shea trees in Burkina Faso are not planted. They stand wild in producer-cooperative parklands, where the cooperative members’ agricultural model does not include synthetic pesticides or fertilisers (the economic model does not include them either). This is “de facto organic” but uncertified, because certifying a wild parkland under USDA NOP or EU 2018/848 is currently impractical. We document this honestly on each batch CoA. See organic certification status.
Export logistics
Shea butter ships from Bobo-Dioulasso overland to Cotonou (approximately 1,300 km, 5–10 days), then by DHL Express or sea freight to destination. Total lead time from harvest finish to delivery is typically 4–8 weeks. Outside harvest season (December through April for the next year), we draw from buffer stock held in temperature-controlled storage at Cotonou.
Origin photography — coming soon
This page is the structure; the field photography from our most recent origin trip is being prepared and will be added shortly. We do not use stock imagery here — only photographs taken on-site by us or by our cooperative partners with explicit consent.
Ingredients we source from this region
Request a wholesale quote for any ingredient from this region, or email us directly with your sourcing question. We respond within two business days.