Shea-Producing Regions of Nigeria and West Africa

Nigeria

Vitellaria paradoxa (synonym Butyrospermum parkii) is a wild savannah tree. In Nigeria it occupies the Guinea and Sudan savannah of the north-central and northern states — not the humid forest of the far south. Hall et al. (1996) and later distribution models (Naughton et al. 2015) place the Nigerian belt on that savannah corridor, continuous with Benin to the west and Cameroon to the east.

FAOSTAT records shea nuts (karité nuts) as a Nigerian crop among other producing countries. This page does not state a share of world production. For a ranked country summary see shea-producing regions of West Africa. EMI Agro buys wild-collected kernels through cooperatives in Kwara, Niger, Kaduna, Kogi and presses them in Ibadan — see About. Other Nigerian states in the documented belt include Benue State, Federal Capital Territory, Katsina State, Zamfara State, Sokoto State, Bauchi State, Gombe State.

Niger State

Niger State covers a wide stretch of Guinea savannah west of Abuja, including the Bida Basin and the Niger River towns. Collection landscapes repeatedly described in Nigerian shea writing include Bida, Mokwa, Kontagora and Lapai. Those towns sit inside the range Hall et al. mapped for V. paradoxa; this profile does not rank the state against others.

EMI Agro purchases wild-collected kernels through cooperatives in Niger State. Presence means buying, not owning parkland. This page does not publish a state-level free-fatty-acid figure.

Kwara State

Kwara's northern local government areas — Baruten, Kaiama and Moro — sit in Southern Guinea savannah on the Benin border. That is the same savannah corridor as Borgou and Alibori across the frontier. Collection is typically earlier here than in drier states further north, in line with Hall's south-to-north fruiting gradient.

EMI Agro purchases wild-collected kernels through cooperatives in Kwara. The factory is not in Kwara; kernels move south to Ibadan for pressing and testing. See the unrefined Grade A product page for what that butter is specified as once it is pressed.

Kebbi State

Kebbi occupies north-western Nigeria along the Niger River. The Zuru and Yauri belts sit in Northern Guinea and Sudan savannah, toward the drier side of the Nigerian range. Flowering is still a dry-season event; collection tends to run later than in Kwara or northern Oyo.

EMI Agro does not currently list Kebbi among its cooperative sourcing regions. The state is profiled because it is inside the documented belt, not because EMI buys there.

Kogi State

Kogi is the confluence state. Kabba and the Lokoja axis sit in Southern Guinea savannah at the meeting of the Niger and Benue. Shea parkland here is a lowland savannah tree, not a forest or highland one. The state shares a western border with Kwara, so collection windows are similar.

EMI Agro purchases wild-collected kernels through cooperatives in Kogi. Traceability evidence a buyer can ask for is described in the supplier-qualification playbook.

Kaduna State

Southern Kaduna — Kachia, Kagarko, Jema'a — is Guinea savannah shea country. Further north the state grades into Sudan savannah and the trees thin toward the Sahel margin of the range. Collection follows the mid-belt window, roughly May to September.

EMI Agro purchases wild-collected kernels through cooperatives in Kaduna. As elsewhere, that is cooperative purchasing of parkland fruit, not plantation ownership. Post-harvest handling, not the state line, decides free fatty acid on the finished butter.

Oyo State

Northern Oyo — the Oke-Ogun towns of Saki and Iseyin — sits on the southern fringe of the Nigerian shea belt, where Guinea savannah meets derived savannah. That fringe is inside Hall's mapped range. Ibadan, further south, is a forest-edge city and is not a shea-parkland sourcing zone.

EMI Agro's factory is in Ibadan, Oyo State. Oyo is the factory state. It is not one of the four states on the current cooperative sourcing list (Kwara, Niger, Kaduna, Kogi). This profile states both facts so a reader does not collapse factory location into origin.

Nasarawa State

Nasarawa lies east of the Federal Capital Territory in north-central Guinea savannah, between the Jos Plateau and the Benue trough. Lafia and Keffi are the towns most often used as geographic anchors. The state is inside the belt; the high Plateau to the north-east is a different agro-ecology.

EMI Agro does not currently list Nasarawa among its cooperative sourcing regions. The state is inside the belt; that is not the same as an EMI origin.

Borno State

Southern Borno — the Biu Plateau and the Askira/Uba axis — is the eastern Nigerian fringe of the shea belt. The Lake Chad basin further north is Sahel and lies outside typical shea parkland. Collection windows here run later than on the southern fringe.

EMI Agro does not currently source in Borno. Security and logistics in the north-east are a separate operational question; this page records only the botanical geography.

Adamawa State

Adamawa occupies the Gongola basin and the Cameroon-border highlands. Shea is a Guinea-savannah lowland tree here, continuous with Cameroon's North and Adamawa Regions. Yola and Numan sit in that lowland; they are geographic anchors, not a production ranking.

EMI Agro does not currently list Adamawa among its cooperative sourcing regions. Cross-border parkland with Cameroon does not change the subspecies: this is still West African paradoxa.

Taraba State

Taraba spans the Benue trough and the Mambilla highlands. Shea belongs in the northern and western lowlands — Wukari and Ibi are useful anchors — not on the Mambilla Plateau, which is too high and wet for typical parkland.

EMI Agro does not currently source in Taraba. The state is included because it sits on the documented belt, adjoining Cameroon and the Benue corridor.

Plateau State

Lower Plateau — Langtang, Wase, Shendam, Quan Pan — is Guinea savannah inside the belt. The high Jos Plateau is cooler and is not the typical shea parkland. Treating “Plateau State” as a single agro-ecology would mis-place the tree.

EMI Agro does not currently list Plateau among its cooperative sourcing regions. As with the other north-central states, freshness of any butter that did come from here would be a handling question, not a geology question.

Ghana

Ghana's shea trees stand in the northern savannah — Northern, Savannah, North East, Upper East and Upper West Regions — not in the humid forest south. Tamale is the inland commercial hub. The Global Shea Alliance secretariat is in Accra, on the coast: that is an institutional address, not a producing zone.

EMI Agro does not source in Ghana. A ranked comparison with other countries is on the West Africa regions list.

Burkina Faso

Almost the whole of Burkina Faso is Sudanian savannah inside the shea range. Processing and trade concentrate around Bobo-Dioulasso in the west and Ouagadougou in the centre — those are established market towns in the literature, not a ranking of output.

Collection typically runs June to September, later than on the southern fringe of Ghana or Nigeria. EMI Agro does not source in Burkina Faso. Subspecies is paradoxa.

Mali

Shea in Mali is a southern and central-southern tree. Sikasso, Ségou and Koulikoro sit in Sudanian and Guinea savannah; the Sahara north of the country is outside the range. Hall et al. and later spatial models agree on that south-of-the-Sahel limit.

Collection is a mid-to-late window, roughly June to September. EMI Agro does not source in Mali. Butter from this range is West African paradoxa, not East African nilotica.

Benin

Benin's shea belt is the northern four departments — Borgou, Alibori, Atacora and Donga — continuous with Kwara and Kebbi across the Nigerian border and with Togo and Burkina Faso to the west. Parakou, Natitingou and Kandi are useful geographic anchors.

EMI Agro does not source in Benin, though Kwara cooperatives sit on the same savannah corridor. Cross-border parkland does not make Benin an EMI origin.

Togo

Togolese shea is a northern tree: Savanes, Kara and the northern part of Centrale, on the same savannah corridor as Ghana's Northern Region and Benin's Atacora. Dapaong and Kara are the usual town anchors.

EMI Agro does not source in Togo. The subspecies is paradoxa. Collection follows the mid-belt May–September window.

Côte d'Ivoire

Ivorian shea is confined to the northern savannah — the Savanes district around Korhogo, and adjoining parts of Zanzan and Woroba. The cocoa-forest south is outside the range. Hall's monograph and later maps treat this as the southern-western edge of continuous West African parkland.

EMI Agro does not source in Côte d'Ivoire. Buyers comparing Ivorian lots with Nigerian lots should treat region as a fatty-acid and texture influence, and handling as the FFA influence.

Guinea

Upper Guinea — Kankan, Siguiri, Faranah — is the shea zone. The humid Forest Region and the Fouta Djallon highlands are outside typical parkland. The trees here sit toward the western end of the West African range, east of Senegal's limit.

EMI Agro does not source in Guinea. Subspecies is paradoxa. Collection is a mid-season window, roughly May to September.

Senegal

Senegal is the western limit of the natural range in Hall et al. (1996). Trees occur in the south-east — Tambacounda and Kédougou — not on the dry north-western coast. That western-limit sentence is why Senegal is profiled even though the producing zone is a fraction of the country.

EMI Agro does not source in Senegal. Subspecies is paradoxa. This profile does not state a national tonnage.

Cameroon

Cameroonian shea is a northern tree: the North and Adamawa Regions, continuous with Adamawa and Taraba in Nigeria. The humid south of Cameroon is outside the range. Garoua and Ngaoundéré are geographic anchors, not a production ranking.

EMI Agro does not source in Cameroon. The subspecies on this side of the border remains paradoxa; nilotica is an East African taxon.

Chad

Southern Chad — Logone, Moyen-Chari, Mandoul and Mayo-Kebbi — is Sudanian savannah inside the belt. The Sahara north of the country is not shea country. Moundou and Sarh sit in that southern savannah.

EMI Agro does not source in Chad. Collection typically runs later than on the West African southern fringe. Subspecies is paradoxa.

East Africa (subsp. nilotica)

Subspecies nilotica occupies the eastern end of the shea belt: northern Uganda (Lango and Acholi — Lira, Gulu, Otuke), South Sudan, and western Ethiopia (Gambella and adjoining lowlands). Hall et al. (1996) and Kew's treatment of the species separate this taxon from West African paradoxa.

Published fatty-acid work (Maranz et al. 2004; Di Vincenzo et al. 2005) describes a softer butter, higher in oleic acid, with a lower melting point than West African paradoxa. That is a provenance and subspecies difference, not a handling grade. EMI Agro does not supply nilotica. The comparisons hub covers other butters and oils. Texture numbers live on the melting-point specification.