Analysis of Export Restrictions in the Shea Sector

Analysis of Export Restrictions in the Shea Sector

What happened: Between late 2024 and 2025, Burkina Faso, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Nigeria and Togo restricted shea kernel exports (bans, quotas, levies) to keep supply for domestic processors and promote local value addition. This followed a price spike driven by strong international demand (including cocoa butter substitution) and a poor 2024 harvest. Ghana and Guinea stayed open.

Key findings:

• Prices: Restrictions dampened domestic price growth. From 2020 to 2025, prices rose about 184% in open regimes versus 67% in closed ones. A simple difference-in-difference estimate puts closed-regime prices roughly 25% lower than open regimes (the paper itself cautions this is indicative, not causal).
• Who wins and loses: Processors gain cheaper, more reliable inputs, while rural kernel producers, mostly women, bear the cost through lower farm-gate prices.
• Capacity matters: Mali is the clearest risk case, with about 100,000 MT of production against only about 60,000 MT of processing capacity. That means oversupply and a potential loss of roughly USD 20 million a year in export sales.
• Spillovers: Restrictions diverted buying toward open markets (especially Ghana) and increased informal cross-border trade, pushing neighbors to adopt their own restrictions.

Conclusion and recommendations: Export restrictions are a blunt tool that can’t create competitive industries on their own. The paper recommends:

1. Regional coordination through ECOWAS or AfCFTA
2. Credible, predictable, gradual policy
3. Complementary support such as financing, infrastructure, quality systems and producer organizations

Without these, restrictions risk persistent distortions, lower rural incomes and lost buyer confidence.

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