AAK Personal Care and Beiersdorf are on course to meet a sustainability programme target of supporting 10,000 female shea collectors in West Africa by 2024.
More than 4,000 women have taken part in the training courses in Burkina Faso and Ghana to empower women in the shea supply chain.
Projects include the Clean Cookstoves Initiative in which women have learned how to use local materials to build safer and more efficient alternatives to traditional stoves.
They have also learned how to protect their valuable source of income by managing the shea parklands; so far, 5,000 seedlings of the shea tree alone have been planted.
The project, which launched in 2019, is being implemented by Beiersdorf in cooperation with Swedish shea supplier AAK, and it is being supported by German-based provider of climate protection solutions First Climate, and the Global Shea Alliance.
All shea nuts are gathered in the wild from free-standing, widely scattered trees in the savannah and from farmland owned by local farmers.
Planting shea seedlings promotes the farmer-controlled regeneration process by supporting the natural germination of trees.
“During our visit, we saw first-hand how the women directly implement their newly acquired knowledge, thereby improving their lives and the well-being of their communities,” said Lisette Townsend, global marketing director for AAK Personal Care.
