Kathrin Schreckenberg 107Substitution in direct consumption
Shea fruit remain important as a nutritional snack during the early agricultural
season. Yet the use of shea butter may be changing. Today its main local use is
in cooking and it is currently the cheapest cooking oil available year-round.
However, both the indigenous Anii and the immigrant Logba prefer to use palm
oil if they can afford it, and all the ethnic groups like the even more expensive
groundnut oil. Apart from taste, the latter has several other advantages.
Groundnuts are one of the few crops increasingly cultivated by women, who are
therefore less dependent on the vagaries of natural production (as in the case
of shea) and male collectors (as in the case of palm oil), and processing the oil
is much less labour intensive and time consuming (Schreckenberg 2000). Across
the border in Togo the preference for groundnut oil has apparently already led
to a reduction in the number of shea trees retained in fields (Sauvaget 1981).
A minor but still common local use of shea butter is in the manufacture of
traditional soap (also made with palm kernel oil). This soap has been widely
replaced by manufactured soap for both laundry and personal hygiene and is
now primarily used for medicinal purposes.Substitution in income-generation
NTFPs are often considered to be particularly important as a source of income
for poorer groups within society (Neumann and Hirsch 2000). Although no data
on relative well-being were collected in this study, there was a consensus
among women that shea nuts were particularly important for those with few
other income-generating options. These include the elderly (often widows,
and without the physical strength necessary to engage in other activities) and
young women newly married into the villages who had not yet had the time or
capital to get started in other activities. Like most NTFP-based activities in
the study area, trading in shea kernels has the advantage of requiring no
capital investment but collection is time consuming and uncertain (owing both
to variable natural yields and fluctuating prices). Most women therefore aspire
to more consistently lucrative activities such as petty trade, storage and resale
of agricultural crops or investing in smallstock (Schreckenberg 2000).
The trend away from NTFP-based incomes in general is demonstrated by
the fact that the Peulh women, who live further from the main road and
access to markets, rely to a much greater extent on NTFP-based incomes than
the women of the three ethnic groups settled along the major road. Even
among these there are significant differences in the volume of shea kernels
collected, with the highest level of collection among the Otamari (Table 1).
The indigenous Anii, who consider themselves to be the most ‘modern’ of the
ethnic groups, collect the lowest amounts of kernels, no longer know how to
make shea butter and generally rely little on NTFP-based incomes.
The trend away from shea amongst the indigenous Anii, both in consumption
and as a source of income, appears to be confirmed by another indigenous group,
the Nagot, in the nearby small town of Manigri. The Nagot women have a number
of other income-earning opportunities based principally on cassava cultivation
and processing. Combined with the existence of a more active fuelwood market,
this has led to shea being one of the main fuelwood species sold (Grund 1993).06SHEA.P65 107 22/12/2004, 11:04