Forest Products, Livelihoods and Conservation

Kathrin Schreckenberg 93

including yield estimates for shea and African locust-bean (Parkia biglobosa

(Jacq.) Benth). This was combined with an inventory of land-use types and

tree densities in a circle (with 3.3 km radius) around each village, this being

the approximate area from which NTFPs were collected and in which the

majority of fields lay. On the demand side, community-level meetings were

followed by regular group discussions with women in all three villages to discuss

the role of NTFP incomes in their livelihoods as well as weekly observations at

two weekly markets for a whole calendar year. This was supplemented by a

complete household survey to determine the amounts of NTFPs used (for

subsistence and sale) in the previous year.

Much NTFP research focuses on products that have suddenly caught the public

eye because of the rapid decline in resources (e.g., woodcarving and trophy

hunting in southern Africa), the boom-and-bust nature of markets (e.g., rubber

and brazil nut in Bolivia), the impact of high-profile outside interventions

(‘rainforest crunch’ literature) and concern for the empowerment of local people

(e.g., Brazilian chicleros and rubber tappers). This shea case study is perhaps

unusual in that it is a by-product of a larger study on NTFPs in an area that was

chosen primarily for logistical reasons^2 rather than because NTFPs were

considered to be an issue of any particular importance, and where processing

and trade have not been supported by any external interventions. While the

chapter refers to the shea trade more generally, the specific case study is not

representative of the key shea-producing areas in the drier Sahelian region.

Regional setting

The research was carried out in three villages (Kodowari, Djantala and Diepani

PK8) in the Bassila subprefecture, Atacora Department, Benin. The three

villages were selected as being average-sized (50–500 inhabitants) communities

representing a cross-section of ethnic groups. Bassila, a small town of 5,500

inhabitants, lies about 350 km inland, close to the Togo border (Figure 1).

Together with most of the local villages it is sited along the main road leading

from the coast to Burkina Faso in the north. Although unpaved, this road is a

major trade route and two of the study villages (Djantala and Diepani PK8)

were established here by immigrants in the late 1960s and early ’70s to take

advantage of relatively empty land along a good road. The indigenous village,

Kodowari, moved from its original forest location to its present roadside location

at the same time.

Vegetation in the Bassila region is a typical ‘savanna landscape’ (Bourlière

and Hadley 1983), in which savanna vegetation dominates but is interrupted

by a series of distinctive gallery forests along mostly seasonal watercourses.

With its unimodal rainfall (May–October) of around 1,300 mm, the Bassila region

falls into the Northern Guinea savanna category in the Keay (1953) classification

or the broader category of ‘Sudanian woodland’ according to White (1983).

This is the southern and wettest end of the shea distribution.

This area of Benin was once the ‘wood-basket’ of the country. By the time

this study was carried out in 1992/3, however, the area around the villages was

dominated by field, fallow, bush savanna (savane arbustive) and tree savanna

(savane arborée) in almost equal proportions (around 20% each), the remainder

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