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, usually through our Cotonou hub and sometimes straight from Burkina Faso to buyers in the United States, with 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.