The outer packagings of the 1 to 10kg units are handmade by women of the LOBI tribe. The earnings of the basket sales represent a large percentage of their overall yearly income.   

Attention: Many shea butter suppliers use the word fair trade in their marketing campaign without coming up with a clear, satisfying definition on what they exactly understand by the words fair trade. We think that by just buying Shea Butter from women groups, one is still far away from applying fair trade practices. 

From our experiences, Shea Butter prices paid to the women producers are sometimes so low that they do not allow the producers to have any profit margin. Buyers often make use of the low education level of the women (most are illiterate) and/or bribe some (often male and literate) leaders of the group to accept low prices for the butter. 

In response to a widespread misuse of fair trade from the first purchase on we applied our own fair trade concept. We want to present the end user of our Shea Butter a clear definition of how we get to our minimum purchase price. Moreover we extended our concept to services that go beyond just paying a higher price for the butter. 

The following approach determines our minimum shea butter purchase price: 

Our shea butter price has to be at least 40% above the lowest known shea butter market price in the week of finalizing our price.  Moreover we do an ex-post market analysis to get a better feeling for the market price and to get an orientation for the next intake.This revealed for the 2010 production that our price is 80-83% higher than prices that others pay to womens cooperatives for sheabutter. Our price for BeurreDeKarité "Sensitive" exceeds this even further due to the 100% handmade characteristics. Enjoy our products.

With the purchase of Shea WaLe Produkten you are giving African women the chance for the improvement of their families income situation. You support local rural industries and the maintenance of ancient local production knowledge.

However, our ProPoor strategy is more than just paying higher and fair prices for the butter. Our goal is to work with our women over the long run. If accepted by them we are serving as advisors for the whole group. Our advice could than be around the following topics: 

• Development of the shea nut value chain.  
• Development of a savings culture.
• How to handle best group dynamics which will finally improve the success of the group.
  
  Through the application of Shea WaLe Shea Butter you are contributing to performance oriented development assistance.