Competition for shea trees is rising in west Africa, leaving the poorest women collectors with less access and fewer gains.

Shea butter is in everything from diaper cream to tissue paper, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers shea nuts — from which the butter derives — to be tree nuts, and therefore potential ...

DURHAM, N.H.— The shea tree is a vital social and economic crop that is best known for the popular product shea butter—a multimillion-dollar ingredient used in cosmetics, personal care products, ...

Shea butter is fat that’s extracted from the nuts of the shea tree. It’s solid at warm temperatures and has an off-white or ivory color. Shea trees are native to West Africa, and most shea butter ...

In northern Uganda’s Pader district, a women-led cooperative is leading efforts to replant shea trees, restore deforested land and improve local livelihoods through the processing and sale of shea ...

Alicia is a writer, photographer, and social entrepreneur specializing in sustainable travel, wildlife and nature conservation, and environmentally friendly agriculture and eating. She holds an M.S.

EUGENE, Ore. -- University of Oregon anthropologists have pushed back the history of harvesting shea trees in West Africa by more than 1,000 years earlier than previously believed. Evidence for ...

With nuts scarce as the shea season draws to a close, buyer Souleymane Sangare's warehouses in Ivory Coast's northern city of Korhogo are empty. In a country where shea production is modest and ...

The shea tree is best know as a source for a multimillion-dollar ingredient used in cosmetics, personal care products, pharmaceuticals and chocolate. But for hundreds of thousands of African families ...