Despite accounting for more than 40 per cent of global shea nut production, Nigeria currently captures less than six per cent of the global shea butter market, a disparity the Nigeria Commodity Exchange says reflects years of exporting raw commodities with little value addition.
The forum, themed “Adding Value at Home: A Fair Parent Market That Puts Nigerian Processors and Pickers First,” focused on strategies to restructure the shea value chain, improve market transparency and support domestic industrialisation. Speaking at the event, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Jumoke Oduwole, described the shea industry as a practical example of the Federal Government’s broader strategy to build an economy driven by value addition and profitable exports.
She said, “I heard about this engagement and, coming from somewhere and going somewhere else, I felt it was important to stop by and reiterate the significance of this initiative to the entire economy. “The Shea story is essentially a pilot and a case study for the Renewed Hope Agenda and what we intend to achieve with commodities, with value addition and with the mandate of the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment.
“I am particularly proud of the Nigeria Commodity Exchange, the Managing Director and his team because of where we started from since 2024 under the mandate of Mr President to ensure that our commodities create value domestically and also generate profitable exports for the economy.” According to the minister, the framework being developed for the shea sector could serve as a blueprint for the development of other agricultural commodities.
She said, “I am glad that the transformational framework that we have all agreed upon through stakeholder engagements and validation exercises will deliver a situation where this economy and the shea value chain become an example of what we can do with cashew, sesame, ginger and several other commodities through value addition and processing.
“We are here from the ministry to support that mandate under item seven of the Renewed Hope Agenda. I was able to update Mr President two days ago. If you followed his visit to Kigali, he spoke about commodities, industrialisation and what we are doing in this regard.
There is a lot of profitability to be made across the shea value chain, and we are determined to support businesses because when you succeed, that is when we achieve our mandate of building a one-trillion-dollar economy by 2030,” she stated. Earlier, the Managing Director of the Nigeria Commodity Exchange, Anthony Atuche, said Nigeria’s vast shea resources had not translated into commensurate economic gains because of structural weaknesses in the sector.
Across our communities, millions of women and rural households depend directly or indirectly on the shea value chain for income and livelihoods,” he said. He recalled that the Federal Government had introduced restrictions on the export of shea products as part of efforts to encourage domestic processing.
“In 2025, there was an initial ban on the export of shea goods by the Federal Government of Nigeria. That ban was subsequently extended in February 2026. “The idea behind that decision was to prevent Nigeria from remaining merely a supplier of raw materials and instead become a supplier of value-added products, especially to support domestic processors,” he explained.
According to him, the industry still struggles with poor data systems, weak market structures and inadequate financing arrangements. He said NCX had been mandated to establish a value transformation framework that would improve transparency and build confidence in the market.