When private sector partners lead development in West Africa, you get transformative sustainable growth.

I just had the privilege of attending the USAID West Africa Trade & Investment Hub’s (Trade Hub) two-day Learning Event in #Abuja that featured 27 of the 93?Trade Hub grantees. Frankly, I don’t like the word “grantees” – I prefer #coinvestment partners –?because they represent businesses across 16 countries in the West Africa region that have co-invested $5-$6 for every $1 of grant provided by USAID’s?Trade?Hub. (To learn more about these pioneers and their journeys, please follow this link.)

Among the dozens of motivating success stories that I heard during the enlightening event in Nigeria’s capital city on Sept. 6 and 7, one in particular stood out. Towards the end of the second day, facilitators asked the audience at each table to discuss solutions to sustain the incredible results generated by the co-investment partners. At our table were several entrepreneurs, including a founder and CEO who co-invested with the?Trade?Hub to expand her large-scale shea butter and?soya processing factories. Meet?Dora Torwiseh?of?Nuts for Growth, based in northern Ghana. With support from the USAID Trade Hub, Nuts for Growth (N4G) constructed a state-of-the-art, 300 Metric Ton Per Day (MTPD) shea butter processing plant in March 2023, scaled soya diversification among 20,000 women #farmers and will launch a 150 MTPD soya crusher by early next year.??

Dora founded N4G to integrate and add value to the shea kernels collected by Women for Change (W4C), a group that she founded in 2011. W4C is now a dedicated supplier network of over 80,000 women smallholder farmers in northern #Ghana who supply N4G with shea kernels. To learn more about Dora’s company, please check out this link.?

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#SheaButter is a key West African product and Ghana is the market export leader. Shea trees are an important tool used to fight desertification in the Savannah and Sahel regions, creating a “green wall” across part of the continent. It is also one of the very few #WomenLed industries that incorporate females throughout the value chain, including tree care, fruit collection, nut processing and the production and selling of shea butter, locally called “liquid gold.”??

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As we huddled to discuss business #sustainability, Dora showed us texts that she recently received for another large order for shea butter from a key U.S. company. It was exciting to see this as proof of what USAID Trade Hub helped co-catalyze. We asked Dora how she priced this large deal. She gladly walked us through her cost structure and her pricing strategy. “I know I need to assess the market demand,” Dora said, explaining the use of shea butter as a cocoa butter alternative. She noted that the global market price of shea butter positively correlates with the global market price for cocoa butter, allowing her to negotiate fair and transparent market-based prices with her multi-national buyers. When I heard that, I was speechless. I knew then we need not worry about sustainability.

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The work of the USAID Trade Hub supports #PrivateSector pioneers and leaders in #WestAfrica, like Dora, to drive #LocallyLed and largely locally financed #EconomicDevelopment that is sustainable, inclusive and transformative.??