Agribusiness & Trade Desk
When the Federal Government halted raw-shea exports in August 2025, traders panicked and prices crashed by one-third. But barely a month later, the script flipped.
Processors across Oyo, Kwara, and Niger States are now absorbing supply, sending farm-gate prices from ₦570 /kg to nearly ₦1,000 /kg.
It’s a classic Nigeria-first pivot — pain first, profit later.
“This policy gives us the stability we’ve long needed to plan, invest, and expand,” says Sadiq Kassim, spokesperson of the Nigeria Agribusiness Group. “Now factories run at full throttle and farmers finally earn.”
⚡ THE REBOUND IN HARD NUMBERS
- Pre-ban average price: ₦850 /kg → Post-ban low: ₦570 → Now: ₦1,000 (+18 %).
- 20 + processing plants back to 70 % capacity.
- Rural women’s income up ≈ 35 %.
- Exporters shifting to refined butter and cosmetics-grade oil.
- Global shea value ≈ $6.5 bn; Nigeria now chasing 5 % share.
FROM BAN TO BOOM, HOW IT HAPPENED
The rebound is tied to enforcement of the 30 % Value Addition Bill, championed by the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC).
Local plants starved of raw nuts now have guaranteed feedstock.
Export middlemen may be angry, but processors are smiling — and so are communities that once watched wealth sail overseas.
Professor Nnanyelugo Ike-Muonso of RMRDC told IDNN:
“Without local processing, we export jobs. With it, we export finished value — that’s the new playbook.”
WINNERS, LOSERS & THE NEW SHEA ECONOMY
- Winners: Local processors, rural cooperatives, packaging firms, logistics chains.
- Losers: Middlemen hoarding raw nuts for export; smugglers at porous borders.
- Ripple Effect: Rural employment spikes; investors eye shea butter exports to the EU under AfCFTA preference.
Olaolu Ajide, a buying agent in Ibadan, summed it up:
“We used to beg for buyers. Now buyers beg for stock.”
INVESTORS SMELL SHEA GOLD
Domestic players are lining up funding rounds to expand extraction lines.
With guaranteed supply, agritech start-ups, FMCG giants, and beauty-care brands are scouting partnerships.
Analysts project a ₦250 billion shea-value-chain by 2027 if policy consistency holds.
This is IDNN. Independent. Digital. Uncompromising.
