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Kwara State is set to take centre stage in Nigeria’s shea industry as Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq prepares to inaugurate a 50-tonne shea butter processing factory in Kaiama, the second largest in the country and the biggest owned by a state government.
This development comes on the heels of President Bola Tinubu’s recent ban on the exportation of raw shea butter, a move designed to boost local production, encourage value addition, and retain wealth within producing communities.
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Governor AbdulRazaq welcomed the presidential directive, describing it as a timely policy that will strengthen the local value chain, improve product quality, and create thousands of jobs across the shea industry.
“The presidential directive will spur local production and value addition. Locating the factory within Kaiama puts the people at the centre of Shea production and ensures local ownership of benefits such as job creation, reduced post-harvest losses, and value retention in the community,” the governor said in a statement on Tuesday.
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The factory, a flagship project of the AbdulRazaq administration, is designed to stimulate economic activities in Kwara North, where women farmers and pickers dominate shea nut collection. By integrating raw material sourcing, processing, and market access, the project is expected to serve as a model of backwards and forward integration.
Kwara and Niger States are the heartlands of shea nut trees in Nigeria, with Kwara North alone credited with over 250,000 naturally occurring trees spread across 6,000 hectares of land.
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