INVESTING IN TREES AND LANDSCAPE ... - PROFOR

Most of the shea butter currently exported from West Africa is procured by export agents directly
from the pickers or from a network of local intermediaries without regard to quality, and no quality
premium is available to reward a producer’s efforts to produce a higher quality shea kernel. Quality
assurance is a challenge for the sector; improvements in this area would be in important part of an
investment program.
The market demand for shea butter of African origin is currently estimated at roughly 5,000–8,000 MT
a year. North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe are the primary destination markets, with
Japan not far behind; however, interest is increasing on the part of cosmetics manufacturers in
emerging economies such as those of eastern Europe and Russia. Brazil is a fairly recent addition
to the ranks of shea-consuming countries; its chocolate industry allows the use of shea butter as a
cocoa butter improver, and several cosmetic companies use shea butter in their product lines.
Allanblackia
Allanblackia spp. is an indigenous African species that has a commercially important feature: Like
shea, its seed produces an oil that is solid at room temperature, which makes it an ideal ingredient
in spreads such as margarine. Because of this, Unilever has estimated that a potential 200,000 MT
could be bought and used each year. This could have an annual value of near $2 billion for farmers.
One of the bottlenecks in the domestication of the species has been methods for its propagation
and multiplication. It does not germinate well from seed, and even when it does, growth is slow—
about 20 years until full production. But vegetative propagation methods now exist for establishing
Allanblackia that reduce by 50 percent the time to full production and increase production levels
through selection of germplasm from best performing trees.
It is too early for financial analyses of the domestication initiative, but ex ante calculations in the key
growing regions of humid Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania show that an individual tree can produce an
average of 100–150 fruits per season, each fruit containing up to 40 separate seeds. Ten fruits yield
approximately 3 kg of dried seeds containing around 1 kg of Allanblackia oil. So an individual tree
could generate up to 30 kg of oil. A dense stand of Allanblackia is about 90 trees per hectare, so
at full production, about 2.7 tons of oil are produced. At the current price, this translates into about
$800 in revenue. Although the establishment cost for 90 trees is about $400, annual maintenance
is low: only weeding for the first four years, and then only harvesting labor, which is negligible. So
net annual benefits would increase from $250 to $600 per hectare from years 5 to 10, then reach
about $750/ha per year (Pye-Smith 2009).
Biofuels
There has been much hype about the potential of biofuels, including Jatropha, to become a major
cash crop for African farmers, particularly those in less favorable lands. Part of the optimism comes
from experiences in India, where regulations prescribe that a minimum level of biofuels be used
in public transportation systems. Jatropha has been promoted in many countries in eastern and
southern Africa. However, agronomic and financial analyses on the first five years of Jatropha system
planting in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Kenya show that yields are very low, well under a mean of 1
kg/tree, compared with projections of more than five times that amount (Iiyama et al. 2011). Under
such conditions, there are no profits. Compounding the poor agronomic results are the facts that
marketing chains are not well developed and potential profits depend on oil prices. More analyses
will need to be done on the sector as the recent large- and small-scale plantations mature.
30 INVESTING IN TREES AND LANDSCAPE RESTORATION IN AFRICA