Advancing Women's Rights to Strengthen Shea Enterprises

This case study describes the 'Enhancing Women’s Land Tenure through Shea Tree Mapping' project, which uses geo-tagging and digital mapping to provide evidence of assets for women shea producers in West Africa. By recording the location of shea trees and linking them to the women who manage them, the project aims to overcome financial barriers, improve access to productive assets like motorised tricycles, and provide legitimacy to women's co-operatives in the eyes of policymakers and investors.

• Women shea producers face increased operational burdens because productive trees are located further into parklands due to land clearing and burning, which increases collection costs, time, and post-harvest losses.
• Access to financial services for productive equipment, such as motorised tricycles, can mitigate collection constraints by increasing capacity, reducing travel time, and enabling the aggregation of kernels for higher-value sales.
• Digital mapping of shea trees and the women who collect from them creates verifiable data that serves as proof of assets, reducing risk for financial service providers and increasing the legitimacy of women's co-operatives with investors and policymakers.
• The 'Enhancing Women’s Land Tenure through Shea Tree Mapping' project, funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), has digitally recorded over 16,000 shea trees and connected them to more than 3,500 women producers across Ghana, Togo, and Benin.

APA

Global Resilience Partnership (2026). Advancing Women's Rights to Strengthen Shea Enterprises. https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/advancing-womens-rights-to-strengthen-shea-enterprises/

Chicago

Global Resilience Partnership. Advancing Women's Rights to Strengthen Shea Enterprises. 2026. https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/advancing-womens-rights-to-strengthen-shea-enterprises/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Global Resilience Partnership |title=Advancing Women's Rights to Strengthen Shea Enterprises |date=24 April 2026 |url=https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/advancing-womens-rights-to-strengthen-shea-enterprises/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{globalresiliencepartnership2026advancing, author = {{Global Resilience Partnership}}, title = {{Advancing Women's Rights to Strengthen Shea Enterprises}}, institution = {Global Resilience Partnership}, year = {2026}, month = apr, url = {https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/advancing-womens-rights-to-strengthen-shea-enterprises/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }