“Overall, across West Africa there is a decline,” said Dr Mahesh Poudyal, who presented a study of the regeneration of shea trees in Burkina Faso and Mali at the conference. “At this point, it’s not an emergency but something that people should start to think about.”
 

The conference brought together leading researchers on shea from across the world, including USAID Trade Hub Shea Sector Advisor Dr. Peter Lovett, who has conducted research on shea for over 15 years. Another exciting development was the demonstration of a hand-held device that can measure key aspects of sheanut quality.
 

The stakes are high: Shea is critical to the livelihoods of at least four million women across West Africa – and even more when one considers that the trees grow in a belt across Africa, from Senegal to South Sudan and Uganda. For centuries, women have transformed sheanuts into shea butter, a vegetable fat that is used in food preparation and as a high quality balm for skin.
 

Shea has also been an important export for international use over the last 50 years. Shea has been industrially processed to produce specialty fats with properties that make it ideal in chocolate and a variety of other food products. And in the past 20 years, international interest in shea has only grown as consumers become familiar with its qualities in cosmetics.
 

Research on shea continues to show why, as science confirms what many who use shea have intuited for millennia. Japanese researchers last year reported that shea contained compounds that are known to fight cancer. Even archaeologists may have stumbled on another, perhaps less practical use: as a hair ointment for royalty -- strands of hair on mummies show evidence of being anointed with a vegetable fat.
 

Despite threats to shea trees, researchers were optimistic for shea at the INNOVKAR event, which was held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The project has led to greater knowledge on shea.  For example, contrary to local beliefs, the domestication of shea is now a distinct possibility for the management of the trees, researchers said in one presentation.
 

At the Global Shea Alliance’s annual conference in Ghana in April, indeed, researchers demonstrated how to graft shea trees – a technique that combines the desired qualities of two trees in a sapling.
 

Still there are threats to shea that have raised concern among shea researchers – and stakeholders across the region.
 

Shea trees are under threat from human activity, Dr Poudyal said. Farming is taking more land and young shea trees and seedlings are getting plowed under or uprooted before they can mature.
 

“This is something farmers need to be more aware of,” he said. “We found that on land left fallow for six years and more, shea regenerated rather well.”
 

Once shea trees do establish themselves, however, they are in it for the long haul. Trees will fruit between 12 to 15 years old – and will live up to 300 years, although they fruit more erratically and in less quantity the older they get.
 

“You cannot underestimate the importance of shea in African and specifically in West African culture,” said Thomson Ogunsami of GIZ’s Pro-poor Growth and Promotion of Employment in Nigeria Programme (SEDIN). “Shea is important economically – it is even more important culturally, socially and traditionally. It has sustained and enriched life across the continent.”
 

The demonstration of a hand-held device to measure the quality of sheanuts drew wide interest at the conference – and could facilitate better prices for women collectors: with an objective measure to gauge quality, standards could be implemented. Buyers have long said they will pay more for higher quality nuts – but an objective measure of quality has made the pledge difficult to implement.
 

“If we know that the nuts we are buying are of a higher quality, then certainly they will attract a better price,” said the representative of an international company that buys sheanuts across West Africa.
 

“Quality nuts should get a higher price,” said Eugenia Akuete, president of the Global Shea Alliance. “That would send a powerful signal to millions of women who collect sheanuts, and affect the way nuts are handled and stored. It could transform the industry.”
 

The key sticking point has always been how to ensure that the nuts are of a higher quality. Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy, Fabrice Devreaux of CIRAD, a French research centre working with developing countries to tackle international agricultural and development issues and the home of the Innovkar project, developed the technique. A handheld device can determine the moisture and fat content and the level of free fatty acids, stearic and oleic acids.
 

The device is not cheap – costing from 20,000 to 40,000 euros – Devreaux noted. But development groups and international buyers would probably pay that amount to be able to use it, he said.
 

Human population growth is the primary threat to shea trees survival and better management practices should be adopted to protect shea trees, researchers agreed. Keeping land fallow will allow trees to regenerate and avoiding the use of bush fires to clear land is important. Further, they urged farmers to integrate the trees into their fields and promote non-extractive activities, such as bee-keeping, alongside the trees.
 

Enforcing local environmental bylaws – such as those that forbid the cutting of shea trees to make charcoal – would also help.
 

The dramatic growth in international use of shea and consumer demand for shea bodes well for the tree – if the benefits of that growth reach producers – the millions of women who collect sheanuts, said Dr. Lovett.
 

“People know shea is valuable – but the women collectors must see a very tangible benefit in order to effect a broad impact on practices,” he said. “These women live in some of the poorest rural areas in the world. If they see real increases in income from their shea collecting activities, it will create the incentive for better management practices.”
 

One study in Uganda also emphasized the need to rejuvenate effective traditional conservation practices, which range from shea tree and fruit ownership to traditional punishments for errant community members who disregard the local norms.
 

“The erosion of these traditional conservation practices have been attributed to wars, poverty and other external influences,” the researchers wrote. The mass media, action plays/drama and public awareness campaigns could be used to reduce the loss of these practices, they concluded.
 

“The Innovkar project has been a great blessing to the shea industry,” Akuete of the Global Shea Alliance said. “It is critical that industry stakeholders implement practices that are based on the best science available. These will maximize tree yields and collections, bringing further financial benefits to women collectors.”