By Mohammed Baba Yahaya
Tinubu’s temporary halt on raw Shea nut exports secures the supply chain for the continent’s largest processing plant, promising jobs and economic revival. This policy is overwhelmingly positive and a significant strategic win for Niger State’s Shea butter processing company. It is designed to protect and empower exactly the kind of investment Niger State has made.
The suspension means more raw materials (Shea nuts) are forced to stay within Nigeria, ensuring the company has a stable, increased, and likely more affordable supply to feed its processing machines, create more jobs, and produce more value-added butter for export and local use.
Before the ban, large portion of the Shea nuts harvested in Niger State and Nigeria are taken out of the country by international exporters and shipped raw to countries like Ghana, Mali, and Europe for processing. This created competition for raw materials, often driving up prices and creating scarcity for local processors.
Now that a ban is in effect, it means the primary source of competition for raw nuts has been removed. The processing plant in Niger State would now find it much easier and potentially cheaper to source large volumes of Shea nuts from its local communities. This ensures their multi-billion Naira facility can operate at or near full capacity.
Note, the entire economic rationale for building the plant was to capture the value that comes from processing the nuts into butter within Nigeria and within Niger State. Instead of exporting raw nuts, they can now export processed butter for a value 3times to 5times higher. The ban forces this value chain to develop locally.
This development demonstrates a successful model of proactive industrialization where state-level ambition is synchronized with national trade policy to create a self-reinforcing cycle of economic growth, job creation, and value addition, squarely in line with the Niger State’s agenda for a more prosperous and secured future.