The Business Behind Baraka Shea Butter

Last updated: September 2026

How does buying shea butter help women in Ghana?

It turns their skill into paid work. Baraka's shea butter is unrefined shea butter handmade by the women of the Konjeihi cooperative in Ghana's Upper West Region, so buying it helps women in Ghana directly: the money pays them for gathering shea nuts and turning them into butter. Baraka's 2025 Impact Report counts more than 3,000 women who benefit from income opportunities connected to its operations, and over 1,100 of them work directly in its shea butter supply chain. Part of what the business earns also goes back into the tools, buildings and water at the centre where Baraka and the women work together.

This page is about the business behind the butter: who is paid, what the price covers and how the trade works. For what shea butter does for skin, hair and home recipes, see Raw Shea Butter Benefits: Complete Guide to Skin, Hair, Baby, Pregnancy, and DIY.

Earned income, not a donation

Most of what a purchase does for women in Ghana happens through ordinary paid work. Women earn from collecting shea nuts, from processing them into butter, and from producing and packing the finished goods. Baraka describes this as value integration, not charity: the business only works if the women's work is worth paying for, and the women's income only grows if the business sells.

The difference matters. A gift helps once, while a buyer who comes back season after season is something a family can plan around. The dependence runs both ways, too, because Baraka relies on the quality of the butter the women make as much as they rely on its orders.

How many women the income reaches

Baraka's 2025 Impact Report breaks the figure down by how closely each group is connected to the business:

The report is open that Baraka's view of its partners' supply chains is less direct than its view of shea. The shea relationship is where it invests most and knows most.

Where the income goes

Women in the rural communities where Baraka works are often key earners for their households, and they adjust how they earn through the year around the farming seasons, the opportunities available and their families. The income from shea work goes into that household economy: women tell Baraka they use it for everyday family needs and for their children's school fees. It is the same circle Baraka points to everywhere else on this page: more impact creates more business value, and more business creates more impact, one household at a time.

Customers who choose to give more

Some customers add more than the price of what they buy. In 2025, Baraka's customers contributed about USD $17,500 through tips at checkout and the Dignity of Income Fund, over and above their purchases. These contributions are optional. They pay for things a single sale cannot, such as equipment and training, and the Impact Report counts them separately from sales so it is clear what came from each.

Why sales and impact move together

Baraka's strongest revenue year coincided with its largest impact investments, according to its 2025 Impact Report. That is the point of the model: when the business grows, there is more work to pay for and more money to reinvest at the source. Baraka is also open about what it has not solved. It says it is still learning about seasonality, and about how to scale new initiatives without losing what makes the work effective.

The full figures, with how each was counted, are in the 2025 Social & Environmental Impact Report.

Who makes Baraka shea butter?

Women producer groups in northern Ghana. Baraka shea butter is made by hand by women's producer groups at the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Wa, in Ghana's Upper West Region, the centre where Baraka works with them directly. The women gather the nuts, process them into butter using traditional methods, and increasingly pack the finished product as well. No factory is involved, and no solvent is used at any stage.

Across much of northern Ghana, making shea butter has long been women's work, with the skill passed down within families and communities. Baraka's part is to buy, invest and sell; the knowledge of how to make good butter belongs to the women. For the story of the group itself, see The Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre: How Baraka's Cooperative Partnership Works.

How the women make it

The method is the traditional one, done by hand in stages:

1. The shea nuts are cracked and the kernels roasted.
2. The roasted kernels are milled to a paste.
3. The paste is kneaded with water and boiled so the fat separates.
4. The fat is cooled and filtered.

Nothing is refined, bleached or deodorised afterwards. Because the kernels are roasted and the fat is boiled, heat is part of the method: butter made this way is traditional and hand-made. The full process is set out in How is Handcrafted Shea Butter Made?, which is the page to read for method.

Named women, not anonymous suppliers

The women who make Baraka's shea butter are registered members of their producer groups, trained in the work and known by name. Many have told their own stories on video, in their own words, about what the work has meant for their families, and Baraka keeps those interviews as part of how it records its impact. A buyer is not dealing with an unnamed origin but with specific people doing specific work.

Why each batch looks a little different

Handmade butter varies. Its colour ranges from ivory through cream to pale yellow and shifts between batches, and a mild nutty smell is normal rather than a fault. Colour is one sign among several, though, not proof of quality on its own: what can actually be checked is on each lot's certificate of analysis, described in the section on how the butter is traded.

Who makes Baraka's other ingredients

Shea butter is Baraka's deepest relationship, and the women of the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre also make Baraka's African black soap, kombo butter and baobab oil by hand in Wa. Cocoa butter, coconut oil, palm kernel oil and red palm oil come through supply-chain partners in Ghana: community-based organisations with similar values but their own operations. Baraka says plainly that it sees less of those supply chains than it does of shea and Konjeihi, and that the income each woman earns there is smaller because the volumes are lower.

Why does ethically sourced shea butter cost more?

Because the work is slower and paid properly. Ethically sourced shea butter costs more because hand-processing with water gets less butter from the same nuts than industrial solvent extraction does, and because the price has to cover fair pay for the women, investment in their equipment, independent testing and a traceable supply chain. At Baraka, each of those is a real cost rather than a line on a label, and none can be dropped without changing what the butter is.

What the price pays for

Why hand-processing yields less

Kneading roasted paste with water and boiling it releases the fat that water and heat can free, and that is all the method takes. Traditional water-based hand processing typically yields about 30-33% of the shea nuts' weight in butter; mechanical expeller pressing recovers more, about 40-45%; and chemical solvent extraction, most commonly with hexane, recovers the most, about 50-60%. The traditional route therefore needs more nuts, more labour and more time for each unit of butter. That extra input is the first and largest reason a handmade butter costs more, and it is a choice about method rather than inefficiency. For the full comparison of yields and methods, see Handmade vs Factory-Made Shea Butter: Quality, Value, and Who Benefits.

The costs no one sees

Baraka is frank that running a modern supply chain from a rural centre in northern Ghana to customers in North America takes real investment in marketing, logistics and systems, and that those costs sit in the price alongside the women's pay. This page gives no per-jar breakdown of the price. What matters for a buyer is that each cost in the table above is real, and that the ones that make the butter ethical can be checked.

How to tell whether a higher price is buying something real

A label saying ethical or sustainable is a starting point, not evidence. These are the things worth checking before paying more, from any supplier:

• A named producer group and region. Not just a country, but who made the butter and where.
• The processing method. Whether it was made by hand with water or extracted with a solvent, and whether it was refined afterwards.
• A certificate of analysis for the lot. Measured values from an independent laboratory, rather than a letter on a label.
• Traceability on request. Records that follow the batch back to the people who made it.

How you weigh these is your call. If the lowest price is the priority, a refined butter may do what you need. If you care where the money goes and want to be able to check it, a direct-sourced unrefined butter is the one to choose. Baraka's butter is made for that second reader, and every item on the list can be requested.

What does Baraka do for shea producers?

It buys, and it invests where the work happens. Beyond paying for the butter, Baraka has invested more than USD $100,000 in the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in northern Ghana, co-financed by its customers and its partner NOÈ. That money went into equipment that makes the work safer and lighter, a community water system, covered work space, packing rooms and training that opens new sources of income.

What the investment changed

The story of how Baraka's customers helped pay for this is told in The Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Center: A Customer-Driven Impact Story.

Why the investment has to earn its place

Baraka's rule for spending at the centre is that anything that helps the women should also strengthen the business. Better roasters give more even roasting; sheltered work space means fewer lost days to weather; packing rooms let finished goods leave Ghana ready to sell. Each of these makes the butter better or the operation steadier, which is what keeps the orders, and so the income, coming. Investment that paid for itself in neither way would not last.

Turning waste into fuel

Shea processing leaves byproducts behind. At the centre they are made into fuel blocks for the roasters and stoves, so less wood is cut for firewood. The system works best in the dry season, when the blocks can dry in the open. In the rains output falls, and Baraka is seeking finance for covered drying so the system can run all year.

Training that adds new income

Baraka runs training at the centre so women can earn from more than one product and more than one season. Recent programmes have covered:

• Black soap making, a skill women can use when other work is lighter, with Baraka as the main buyer of what they make.
• Shea butter quality, which protects the value of the butter the women already produce.
• Kombo butter production, a traditional West African butter that gives women another material to sell.

A fourth idea, mango pit collection — gathering pits thrown away after the fruit is eaten and testing them as a new butter — is on hold rather than part of the active training.

The aim throughout is to add income that fits around farming, trading and family life rather than competing with them. Baraka says it does not always get that balance right, and it reports what it is still learning alongside what worked.

Local ownership as the goal

Baraka's longer aim is for women's groups to run their own centres and operations over time, with Baraka moving into a supporting role as that local capacity grows.

What comes next

The next step Baraka has named is another building at the centre for more packing capacity, better quality control across all ingredients, and more storage. It would move more of the work, and more of the income, to Ghana. Covered drying for the fuel blocks is on the same list. The mango pit project stays on hold; mango butter would move toward production only if testing resumes and succeeds. Baraka is looking for partners to share the cost, as NOÈ did before.

How is Baraka shea butter traded?

Directly, with no broker in between. Baraka shea butter is traded directly between Baraka and the women's producer groups at the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Ghana's Upper West Region, with no broker or commodity trader in the chain. Each lot is tested in Ghana, most products are packed to consumer-ready state in Ghana, and Baraka then sells the butter to home makers online and to wholesale buyers such as formulators and small brands.

From shea nut to your jar

1. Gathering. Women collect the shea nuts in season.
2. Hand-processing. The women turn the nuts into butter at the centre, by the method described above.
3. Testing. Each lot is tested by the Ghana Standards Authority against Ghana's national standard for unrefined shea butter, using ISO methods. The results go on that lot's certificate of analysis, which is available on request.
4. Packing. Over 80% of Baraka products are fully packaged to consumer-ready state in Ghana. The rest, mainly oils that need equipment not yet on site, are partly packed in Ghana and finished in Canada.
5. Selling. Baraka sells through its own shop at barakasheabutter.com and supplies wholesale customers directly.

Community Certified Fair Trade, not a third-party scheme

All Baraka products, including this shea butter, are Community Certified Fair Trade. Each year, the women who make Baraka's products meet to review their relationship with Baraka — whether they have been treated fairly — and decide whether Baraka may keep using the Community Certified Fair Trade mark for the coming year. That covers a premium price above market, a price and relationship negotiated as a group, a respectful and dignified relationship, and support for community, family, youth, education and other priorities the women's groups identify themselves. It is the producers' own certification, built on the direct relationship described in The Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre: How Baraka's Cooperative Partnership Works, rather than a scheme measured by an outside body. The longer account of Baraka's trading relationship is in Fair Trade Shea Butter: The Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre Story.

Why packing in Ghana matters

Packing is work, and work is income. Every jar filled, sealed and labelled in Ghana is paid work at the source instead of in a warehouse abroad. Packing close to production also cuts unnecessary shipping and handling, and it lets quality control happen where the butter is made. That is why the share packed in Ghana is one of the numbers Baraka tracks.

Retail and wholesale

The same butter goes to two kinds of buyer. Home makers buy jars and larger packs online for their own recipes. Formulators, soapmakers and small brands buy in bulk and often need the paperwork as much as the butter: the certificate of analysis and chain-of-custody records let them make sourcing claims they can back up. Baraka's wholesale growth has had outside help, including support from the German Import Development Program for its European market development, and every new wholesale customer means more work at the source.

Buying into the chain

If you want to be part of this trade, the product it is built around is Baraka's Raw Shea Butter: unrefined, handmade by the women at Konjeihi, and the ingredient every other part of this page depends on. You can also browse the full range of Baraka's butters or start with Baraka's best sellers.

What We Know and How We Know It

The figures on this page, from the number of women earning through Baraka's supply chain to the investment at the centre, customer contributions and packing in Ghana, come from Baraka's Social and Environmental Impact Report. That report draws on direct records, surveys and participation data, and uses conservative estimates where exact counts are not available. The testing described here is the Ghana Standards Authority testing recorded on each lot's certificate of analysis. The description of how the butter is made reflects traditional practice among the women producers and Baraka's own process documentation; no outside research was needed.

Disclaimer

The information in this article is for general education. It reflects traditional use, reported experience and, where noted, published research. It has not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or Health Canada. Baraka products are cosmetics and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or medical condition. Always patch test a new ingredient, keep products away from the eyes and out of reach of children, and speak to a qualified healthcare provider about any skin or health condition. Individual results vary.

A note on the traditions in this post: the practices described here come from conversations with, and time spent among, the community members and cooperative partners we work with in West Africa. We share them as anecdotal, first-hand impressions — not as verified fact or expert accounts. These traditions vary from family to family and region to region, so what follows is indicative rather than definitive. We offer it with respect and humility: to share a little of what we've encountered, not to speak for these communities or claim any authority over their traditions.

About the Author

Wayne Dunn is the founder of Baraka Impact and a former Professor of Practice in Sustainability at McGill University. He holds an M.Sc. in Management from Stanford and has spent over 15 years working directly with the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Ghana's Upper West Region to source traditionally made shea butter and natural oils. He shares DIY skincare recipes and ingredient guides designed to be made at home with real ingredients — and sourced with full transparency about where they come from.