Snake Bites Not Stopping Ghana Women Chasing Shea Price Jump
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Doris Acharibia says her new trainees are eager to learn how to make butter from shea nuts in Ghana’s northern savannah.
Growing global demand for the product used in food and as a skin moisturizer is attracting companies like Singapore’s Wilmar International Ltd., the world’s biggest trader of edible oils. Retail prices increased 67 percent in 2014 for butter produced by independent sellers in Acharibia’s group. That’s convinced women in northern Ghana, who already grow rice, soybeans and peanuts, brew a millet drink called pito and make jewelry, to risk snake bites to harvest nuts from trees in the wild.