The Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Hajiah Aisha Abubakar recently revealed that Nigeria accounts for about 57 percent of the world Shea nut production. She also stated that the market for chocolate value is approximately 117 billion dollars while that of the cosmetics industry stands at 382 billion dollars. Both make use of shea butter. Nigeria stands to benefit immensely from the Shea Industry if the informal sector was properly harnessed. This is an untapped goldmine and quite a large number of unemployed people are oblivious to that. Hajiah Aisha Abubakar also announced that Nigeria will host the next International Shea Conference stating that “the International Conference is a forum which enables participants to learn best practices, build a new partnership, launch projects and promote organisational settings and also open new markets for the industry’s products globally. It is also intended to reduce Trade Barriers and also achieve sustainability. With the current administration’s focus on Agriculture, Nigeria stands to benefit immensely from the Shea Industry through the employment generation(women and youths), poverty eradication, wealth creation, environmental sustainability and attract foreign exchange earnings across the value chain”   The 11th Annual International Shea  Conference tagged ‘Shea 2018 is organised by the Federal Ministry of Industry, trade and Investment in collaboration with Federation Ministry of Agriculture, Global Shea Alliance(GSL) and National Shea Products Association(NASPAN). Themed ‘Going Further Together’, the meeting is scheduled to hold in Abuja Nigeria from 12th-14th March 2018. Yours truly has done a little research to provide interested people with some links to start exploration. Ojoba collective a Netherlands based firm supplying botanicals from Africa to Europe. A comprehensive guide to exporting shea butter to Europe for cosmetics can also be found in this report by the Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing countries CBI. And the process of making shea butter can be found in this article by Safarijunkie As usual, you can thank me later when you hit the billions. Goodluck!