The Gubdanda Sheabutter Processing Centre lies just outside Tamale, the capital of Ghana's northern region. Shea is used across the world for skincare, large-scale confectionary production and cooking.
A woman harvests sheanuts north of Tamale. In this more traditional part of the country, opportunities for women to work are fewer than in the south, but harvesting and processing sheanuts has long been considered women's work.
Tubs of shea nuts wait to begin the seven-step process that turns them into butter. The large white bags, filled with shea nuts, represent about a week of harvesting, and they will take another week to process.
A woman with a baby strapped to her back works at the kneading machine — a gray metal tub with a giant spinning corkscrew inside. There are a number of children playing at the center, and a handful of women carry babies while they work. Day care isn't an option.
After the nuts are ground and roasted, the workers mill them into vats of liquid before kneading. These silver tubs, about 2.5 feet in diameter, are used every step of the way, and dozens of them are scattered across the center.
Children wait while women knead the shea nuts, and smoke from the roasting and boiling station (not pictured) fills the center. A U.S.-based nonprofit called BURN Design Lab was testing a new roasting machine, and had also provided some women with monitors of PM 2.5, very fine particles — less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter — which can cause serious respiratory problems. Elaine Vu, who works for the nonprofit, said they'd had issues with data collection and it was still inconclusive. (BURN was only at the center for a week.)
Fuseine Yakubu (in blue) and Fatima Iliasu, with baby Hidaya (in yellow) boil shea butter, the final step before cooling and packaging. All the women contribute to the production process. When asked about income specifics, they laugh, and Yakuta says they don't keep financial records. They turn a small profit, Iliasu said, but not as much as the woman who sells the finished product.
A woman stirs a boiling vat of shea butter. After being boiled, the butter is sieved through a cloth and left to cool.
Each tub of complete shea butter weighs about 100 pounds, selling for just under $1 per pound. One of these tubs is the end of two weeks of work, and will be put into smaller containers for sale in Ghana and abroad. The women here don't sell directly to customers, though — another woman has the key to the storage unit onsite, and she sells the butter.
A baby plays with one of the PM 2.5 monitors, while a woman roasts shea nuts and others look on and chat.
