Shea butter extraction is one of the main off season activity in the country for following reasons:
· Shea butter extraction is one of the main off season activities in Burkina Faso.
· It is energy consuming and uses lot of fuell wood.
· Shea butter creates income especially for women and so empowered them.
· It is use as well in food sector as in the cosmetic one.
· It‘s now and export good and provides income for the country as well..

This first phase aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of Shea butter extraction with solar energy, and spread the idea in the all country.

The following phase will focus on the development of budget food products for the urban area.

Rapid urbanization causes profound changes in the consuming patterns. The traditional cereals, the gardening products and the wild fruit and leaves are less and less transformed for use in the family diet. There is a strong local demand for transformed products which would meet the rising standards in terms of quality, sanitary and nutritional requirements.

Attieké

Attieke is a fermented and gelatinized cassava meal. It is now the most popular cassava product in Burkina Faso. In 1984 the consumption of attieké in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) alone was estimated at 70-80 tons per day (Muchnik and Vinck 1984) and the market demand has continued to grow at a considerable rate. Attieke is mostly made on a small scale by inefficient wood fired stoves leading to deforestation and air pollution. The project will produce attieké with an efficient renewable energy driven production unit. This will lead to a continuous flow of high quality attieké for the local market. The project thus has an impact in food security, deforestation rate and air pollution.

The production of attieké

The operations involved in its production are essentially the following;
· Peeling and washing,
· Chopping (into 3-4cm cubes),
· Mashing or grating,
· Fermenting,
· De-watering,
· Sieving,
· Granulating,
· Drying
· Steaming.

Attieké is cheap and well appreciate by the population in Burkina Faso. Until now the main part of attieké consumed in Burkina Faso is produce in the Ivory Cost and transport by train to Burkina Faso. It is then steamed again and sold mostly evening with fish or chicken. And other part of the attieké is sold to the women that use it for cooking. Or target group will be first the women selling the attieké evening. They can process up to 250 kg per person per day.

Attieké will mainly be sold direct to the women proposing it evening in the cities.

Et les cacahuètes grillées.

Roasted peanuts are already well known and consumed as snacks.
Until now roasted peanuts are produced by using fuel wood. We will produced them by using solar ovens.
The roasted peanuts will be proposed for hotels bar and club,

Solar Food Processing and Conservation (Solar-Food Phase II):

Production of Sheabutter

Project Proposer: International Solar Energy Society (ISES)
Wiesentalstrasse 50
79115 Freiburg
Germany

Project Partner: ISOMET S.A.R.L
William Ilboudo
09 BP 122
Ouagadougou
Burkina Faso

Technical Support: Adrian Konrad
Dorfstrasse 4
8596 Scherzingen
Switzerland

The solar installation in Tiakane

Tiakane is a village in the south of Burkina Faso, 150 km from Ouagadougou. The installed solar system was constructed by ISOMET in Ouagadougou, with technical support from Adrian Konrad. Installation in February 2007. In July 2007 the installation was finished and the women of Tiakane were introduced in the usage of the solar system. Production of solar shea butter was successfully tested.

Technical Equipment

The solar shea butter unit in Tiakane consists of 2 Scheffler Reflectors with kitchen house and 12 solar ovens (Box cooker, goat size). One Scheffler Reflector is of 8 sqm size, the other of 16 sqm. For both of them there is a vessel of 25 l capacity. The power of the reflectors is heavily dependent on the direct radiation of the sun as well as the maintenance and handling of the system. The solar unit is only working on sunshine, i.e. on cloudy days or at night it is possible to switch on biomass such as agricultural residues.

Things to be completed

Both of the Scheffler Reflectors are in good condition and ready to be worked with. Unfortunately 7 of the ovens are damaged and need to be repaired. They should be also additionally completed with a black aluminium sheet to protect the nuts from UV radiation while they are roasted. The glasses of the other 6 solar ovens are broken. For making them function it is necessary to buy new glasses and to manufacture the covering sheets. Before that it should be proved that the functioning ovens are well in use.

The women in Tiakane are used to take the collected nuts to their own house. There the nuts are sterilized and spread on the ground in the court for drying. Inside the court, the nuts are protected from the animals. As the solar installation is centralized in the village, the women want to spread the boiled nuts on the site. Therefore it has to be surrounded by a fence.

According to Adama Batiga, President of the cooperative Yara-Diguissiou in Tiakane, the fence is already in planning. They want to pay it out of the budget of a FEM project.

First analyses of the solar produced shea butter have shown that filtration is necessary.

For starting the production, filtration with tissues and cotton will be sufficient. In case that the production volume will increase in future, a filter will be useful to guarantee proper filtration. In Ouagadougou, the institute IRSAT is selling a hand driven pump with filter for about 800 000 CFA.

Estimated capacity

After some tests, the women of Tiakane estimate a volume of 2500 litres of butter they can produce with this solar unit in one year. This includes: sterilizing the nuts before stocking (June to August), processing the butter when the work on the fields is over (December to April). For the beginning, it is certainly possible to produce 1000 kg of solar Shea butter until the end of April 2008.

Marketing

The unit in Tiakane will be run and maintained properly only if it generates income for the cooperative Yara-Diguissiou. This is very important as the installation in Tiakane is a pilot project. If Tiakane is successful, the potential of further solar installations for shea butter production is enormous.

At the moment, the best thing is to find a salesman who will buy all the produced creating income and thus encouraging the women to increase their production and use the sun as the main energy source.

Contact: in Burkina Faso
Hermann Schopferer
09 BP 1154 BP 743
Ouagadougou 09 Bobo-Dioulasso
Tel/Fax +226 50 39 22 02 Tel 20 98 53 01
Mobile 76 41 64 44 Fax 20 98 53 02
e-mail qmconsulting@t-online.de
Hermann.Schopferer@gopa.de

In Germany
Hermann Schopferer
Bergblick 7
D – 35043 Marburg

Tel +49 (0) 6424 923886
Fax +49 (0) 6424 923887
Mobil +49 172 66 77 631

ISOMET will be in touch with Agri-Faso S.A.R.L. and make the connection between them and the Cooperative Yara-Diguissiou.
In case that Agri-Faso is not buying the butter, the women will have to sell it themselves on the local market.

Further Activities in 2007

The women want to start to process the butter in December 2007. Meanwhile ISOMET has to contact Agri-Faso and to try to get a contract for the women of Tiakane. It has to be decided how the butter will be packed and transported, packaging material will have to be organized.

When the production is starting, ISOMET will send a person to assist. He will help the women to use the solar system, making sure that the butter is processed on solar. Mme Ouedraogo, a woman very well experienced in the production of Shea butter and a producer herself, will show to the women of Tiakane her way of processing the butter, most of all the filtration. She will also be sent by ISOMET.

Description of solar shea butter production

The solar production of shea butter in Tiakane does not differ from the traditional way concerning the process. For that reason, the women of Tiakane can easily go for the solar butter processing. Instead of burning wood any time when heat is required they use now the solar facilities.

A big challenge for the women will be the organisation of the production. While traditionally every family produces the butter at their own court, the solar installation is centralized in the village.

Treatment before Stocking

After being collected, the nuts have to be boiled for about 1.5 – 2 hours. There are two reasons for this: sterilizing and preventing germination while the nuts will be stocked. The boiling can be done on both parabolas, whereas the bigger one is more efficient. In the season when the nuts are collected (Mai, June, July), the sky is not always very clear and often there are cloudy days. This is why the heating up of the pots generally will take more time when it is done solar than by wood fire. When the atmosphere is clear, the solar system is as fast as a fire.

The sterilised nuts are spread on the ground for drying. Now the nuts are stocked in the house for further processing, mainly in the months of December, January, February and Mars when the harvest of the field crops is over and there is time left for other activities.

Crushing and Roasting

The nuts are pealed in the mortar traditionally. Perished nuts are sorted out. Then they are washed with hot water. Afterwards they are crushed, again in the mortar.(see pictures below)
The next step is to roast the crushed nuts. There are two solar ways to roast: in the solar oven or on the parabolas.
The problem with the parabolas is that the heat is very high which can burn the surface of the granules (same on traditional fire). This is leading to an aroma that can later be smelled and tasted in the butter. On the other hand, the roasting on the parabolas is fast and very well accepted by the women because of tradition.The big advantage of using the solar oven is the low temperature of roasting (80 – 120 °C). This is sufficient for destroying the proteins of the fatty vacuoles (the gain of butter out of a certain amount of nuts was very high according to the women of Tiakane). The granules cannot be burnt and there is no strong smell therefore. The roasting process in the solar oven needs time. This requires a good organisation of the work, but technically there is no problem.
There is a sheet covering the nuts in the solar oven, protecting them from direct sunlight. This is to prevent oxidation of the fatty acids caused by UV radiation.
There is not only a difference in the smell of the butter, also the colour is different. There are no black combustion particles when the crushed nuts are roasted in the solar oven. This can be seen very well also in the paste coming from the mill. An oil of higher purity is the result.
At the moment, the only step of all the process that can not be done on solar energy is milling the roasted nuts. For this the diesel mill still has to be used.

Churning, extraction of the oil

The extraction of the oil is done by hand, traditionally.
That for the paste has to be churned. Lukewarm water is slowly added, until the fat is emulsifying.

Conditioning of the butter

Afterwards the butter is boiled and purified on the Parabolas. The water has to vaporize out of the liquid shea butter. Heavy particles set on the bottom of the vessel and become crusted. Light particles foam on the surface and can be skimmed off.

A big advantage of the solar process in comparison with the process on fire is that there is no smoke. No soot and aromas will dissolve in the oil,

About after one to two houres, there is no more vapour rising from the oil. The boiling process is finished. Carefully now the light particles have to be skimmed of. The vessel is posed for a while aside, so that the particles which are swimming in the oil can sediment.

Then the oil can be taken out of the vessel. It is filled in another pot where it is kept over night. Still smaller particles sediment to the bottom and slowly the oil can harden with decreasing temperature.
Now, in the next morning, the shea butter can be sold at the local market for consumption.
If the oil will be sold for exportation, filtration will be necessary when the liquid oil is taken out of the cooking pot.

Quality of the solar shea butter

The shea butter which was produced in Tiakane on the 11^th and 12^th of July was analysed by the laboratory of CEAS in Ouagadougou.
There are 4 parameters determining the quality of the butter.

In the table the values are given for classifying non refined shea butter according to the norms of UEMOA (Union économique monétaire ouest africaine), adopted on the 1th of January 2006. These are the most severe norms for shea butter. In brackets are the values of the 2 tests from Tiakane (nuts roasted on parabola / nuts roasted in solar oven), the butter was only decanted and placed over night but not filtered.

There are too less test results to discuss the details or to compare the different methods of roasting. But two important conclusions can be made:

- Filtration of the butter is a must

- It is possible to produce solar butter of high quality (the smell of the solar butter is also very good which is no criteria in the table above).