Shea Network Ghana, a member of the Global Shea Alliance, will conduct the first African cosmetics exhibition from November 24th to 26th in Accra.

The three-day event, being supported by the Global Shea Alliance, will provide the avenue for cosmetics consumers and other stakeholders to discover natural and locally-made shea products and also create export potentials for them.

The exhibition will bring together over 40 African producers of cosmetics with shea butter as the base ingredient.

“By this exhibition, we hope to stir up the taste of the Ghanaian consumer for these products made right here in Ghana with ingredients from Ghana”, Prince Obeng-Asante, the board chairman of Shea Network Ghana said.

Prince Obeng-Asante touched on the under-utilization of shea even though it yields many products like shea butter which has uses in cooking and in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.

According to him, shea has anti-cancer properties and also yields hard fat which does not produce bad cholesterol in the body.

He also stressed the need to tap into the economic potential of shea since it can produce an equivalent of cocoa butter.

“A lone tree cannot withstand a strong wind. If Ghana wants to develop, instead of building a mono-legged economy based around cocoa, we can build a two-legged economy: one for cocoa and one for shea”, he said.

The shea industry in Ghana produces about 100,000 metric tons of shea kernels every year from about 66 districts across northern Ghana, providing revenue for about 600,000 women collectors and butter processors.