The shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa), the source of one of Africa's oldest oils, is a tree found only in Africa, in a geographical range that stretches over 5,000 kilometers from the West to the East of the continent, from Senegal to Sudan, via 21 nations.

 

Shea butter is without a doubt one of the oldest edible vegetable oils created by man, having been used for millennia. There is archaeological evidence that shea orchards have been in northern Burkina Faso for 1000 years, and there is rising evidence that the shea kernel was known to the Egyptians for far longer. It is 6000 years old.

 

For centuries, famous explorers have reported on walnut cultivation. The nut would have been handed to the legendary Moroccan adventurer Ibn Battuta between 1349 and 1354, during his trek from the Sahara to Mali. A few decades later, it was the turn of the Scottish explorer Mungo Park to emphasize its significance in people's everyday lives. During his hunt for the Niger River's origins between 1795 and 1797, he would also detail his considerable trading. We owe the first known botanical sketches of the tree and the first effort to define the species to him in particular.