If you are longing to become one of Ghana's latest "nouveau riche", then go the nine yards as a shea farmer or producer of the crop.
For, small and medium scale shea farmers and producers will soon advance to the rank of the rich as the product evolves as the nation's newest economic mutt's nut. And this is no day dreaming though it sounds like a stunt.
The shea industry is projected to gross nearly 500 million dollars for the 20 African countries that subsist on this produce in the next five years; albeit only a few of these West African nations are serious contenders. These are Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mali.
A study by the West African Trade Hub (WATH), a United States Government-funded development project that promotes trade in the sub-region, establishes that shea exports' value as of 2008 was 100 million dollars. But this figure is expected to jump dramatically to half a billion dollars in the next five years when the expected investments in the sector begin to yield results.
Dr Peter Lovett, a shea expert, said in a paper that the value of the produce has increased in Ghana with the current average price estimated at 400 dollars per ton. In the past, only 50,000 tons of shea nuts at an average price of 150 dollars per ton were exported, "bringing in less than 10 million dollars to the region", he said.
A blast from the past makes one cringe at the fact that small scale shea farmers and producers could become Ghana's newest "nouveau riche" and the idea sounds like a wild card. It is hard to imagine this product, which is native to rural African women in the savannah zone, becoming the latest "red letter" to Ghana's economic development when it has become has been neglected for years.
It is hard to imagine that although shea is regarded as a big money grosser, Ghanaian authorities have allowed it to be in the lull for the past nine years without a yawn from even the Produce Buying Company, which used to market the product.
The answer may well lie in a number of inter-related factors such as ignorance, the lack of well-thought policy, the lack of clarity from the directing class, and the lack of marketing facilities.
Take the issue of ignorance. Many Ghanaians have little or no knowledge about the economic value of shea besides a limited knowledge about its use for personal care.
Interestingly, WATH has established that increased trade in bulk shea nuts and butter can help "improve rural livelihoods, especially for African women, who pick and hand process shea nuts and butter" noting that optimizing the global value chain of the produce will help in eliminating poverty in the sub-region.
Somehow, many Ghanaians took it for granted. Shea butter is one of the cheapest products on the Ghanaian market so everybody takes it for granted, save when the harmattan beckons. It is also used on new born babies, in line with myths that shea will help to relieve them of stress from the unknown world they came from.
Whatsoever the case, shea is a treasure. In the instance of personal care, shea butter is used differently as a moisturizer, as soap with high "saponifiable" content, and in skin and hair care cosmetics as lotion and cream.
In the gourmet (catering) industry, shea is used as edible fat which is an equivalence of cocoa butter in the making of chocolates, and as an additive to confectionary products, biscuits and pastries in the form of shea stearin or vegetable fat.
Alander (2002) demonstrates that medically, shea can be used as a pharmaceutical product for the treatment of eczema, arthritis and high cholesterol. Equally, shea has regenerative properties that are used to soothe and reduce inflammation, stretch marks and wrinkles. Shea also has antioxidants, carotenoids and flavonoids and as a result, it is often seen as the preferred ingredient in preparations made for the cosmetic industry
Even so, the industry faces lots of difficulties. Despite its tendency to provide all-year-round employment for the projected three million rural women involved in shea harvesting, the sector is struggling with some challenges.
The challenges include poor processing and the difficulty in domesticating the shea crop, which for now remains largely a wild crop and as a result just about half of the expected produce are harvested. Even with this shea trees were being destroyed for charcoal production.
Currently sheanut picking and post-harvesting handling are done in a rudimentary form, thus hindering the effectiveness of the sector to transform from small industrial processing into large industrial processing that will rake in the millions of dollars at stake.
Madam Araba Abu, a spokeswoman for the Sunbawiera Sheanuts and Sheabutter Producers Association in the Upper West Region, recently urged the government not to renege in its commitment to establish an authority to oversee the regulation of the shea industry.
She appealed to the government to supply members with wellington boots, gloves and tarpaulins to facilitate their work.
Similarly, Alhaji Imoru Ayittey, Chairman of the Association in a recent interview with the GNA said sheanut and sheabutter producers remained poor and vulnerable, hence the need for the government to give the industry serious attention.
On the other hand, modest efforts have been made in this regard with diversification in the area of shea butter consolidation, refining and fractionation. According to the WATH, three big companies buy 90 per cent of the sub-region's nuts.
It is not all gloom though. There are some success stories, instigated mostly by WATH, which is working towards increasing exports of regional products to stimulate job creation. Using the AGOA platform, the Hub has helped to produce both bulk shea butter and finished shea cosmetics in line with international quality standards. Most of these products are packaged and shipped to meet rigorous demands of the US cosmetic market.
Through WATH's interventions, two Ghanaian entrepreneurs, Madam Comfort Adjahoe of Ele Agbe Company and Gladys Commey of All Pure Nature Company currently fill orders for more than 12, 000 shea soaps and 4, 000 creams to US markets.
According to WATH, "in addition to boosting their revenues, the order will also provide work and investment opportunities for approximately 120 women in rural northern Ghana" which supplies the shea butter to the two businesses: "Their relationship with Ten Thousand Villages (a U.S.-based fair trade retail chain that is making forays into the cosmetic market) began in 2006, when it participated in a handcrafts buying trip organized by the Hub".
Likewise, Madam Eugenia Akuete, founder of Naasakle, produces 10 tons of butter a month and ships it directly to clients in Chicago through the efforts of the Hub. In neighbouring Benin, Gilles Adamon, owner of Natura Sarl and his colleague Victor Lulla, produce 200, 000 bars of shea butter soap per month.
The scantiness of state policy on the shea trade is also being tackled, though tougher actions are required. Speaking at the 2009 Shea conference held in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabe capital, earlier in the year, Vice-President John Mahama announced that government was overhauling the industry and transform it into a priority one to enable it to tap into the fast expanding global shea trade.
The shift, he examined, was in recognition of the crucial role that the shea crop plays in the socio-economic development of the savannah area of the country and hinted at efforts to place it on the same trajectory as cocoa.
Vice-President Mahama rationalises government's renewed interest in the shea industry as follows: "The understanding of government with these commitments is to make the shea industry the major driving force in the accelerated development of the savannah areas of Ghana."
Among the steps the Vice-President outlined would be taken by the government was to provide farmers with protective clothing to guard against snake and insect bites for the gathering of the wild crop as efforts were being made to domesticate it.
Interestingly, the PBC is making amends too. The company recently signed an agreement with Sysgate Limited of Brazil towards the establishment of shea nut processing plant to be sited on a 6.4 hectare at Buipe in the for the export of shea butter to Brazil.
Nana Aye Kusi, Chairman of the new Board of Directors of the PBC, has also announced the creation of a separate entity, PBC Shea Limited, a 10-million dollar subsidiary of the parent company charged with overseeing the purchasing, processing and marketing of shea nut in commercial quantities.
It is projected that the annual income to be raked in from this facility will slightly be in the region of 40 million dollars per annum.
The establishment of this plant would enable the joint PBC/Sysgate consortium to process between 40 to 100,000 tonnes of nuts yearly, thus helping increase by more than half the percentage of shea nuts harvested annually in Ghana which now stand at about 50 per cent.
But other key issues that might help to spur the growth of the industry remains outstanding. For instance government has yet to appoint a Shea Development Board to provide leadership that is required for the transformation of the industry.
An essence of this feature is to remind the Mills Administration of the need to quickly put in place the structures that will help facilitate the growth of the shea industry and make it a fulcrum for reducing poverty among women in the three northern regions of Ghana and the contiguous savannah belt of the Volta and Brong-Ahafo Regions.

A GNA feature by Nathaniel Glover-Meni