AAK has been honored with the FI Europe Sustainability Innovation Award for its Kolo Nafaso direct sourcing program in West Africa, recognized for its focus on "Empowering women through shea."

The program stood out to judges for its demonstrated impact across  environmental, societal and economic sustainability pillars. 

Since its inception in 2009, Kolo Nafaso has focused on the alleviation of poverty, and empowerment of shea collecting women through direct trade, interest-free micro credits, education and training.

Empowering women and alleviating poverty

To date, nearly a quarter-million women have benefited from taking part in the program. At the same time, we have built a secure, sustainable, and traceable supply of shea nuts, which we process into speciality ingredients for a wide range of customers.

The fruit produced by the shea tree is a unique crop, the cultivation of which requires no fertilisers or pesticides. Growing in parklands and agroforestry systems in an area known as the shea-belt, which stretches across western Africa, the shea tree is an important source of income for the communities that live in this area.

Traditionally, it is the women who collect the shea fruit and process the kernels it contains. Income earned from the crops provides women with funds to alleviate poverty and hunger, to invest in children’s education and capital to support other income-generating activities. In West Africa alone, an estimated 16 million rural women rely on this seasonal work to augment their income. 

At the heart of the Kolo Nafaso program is the offer of interest-free micro credits made available when money runs short before the harvest. Our regular surveys indicate that 70 percent of the women involved in the program reinvest their earnings for future needs, including agricultural ventures and their children’s education. 

So, what is shea used for?  

We process the shea nuts we source from West Africa at our facility in Aarhus, Denmark where we extract the high-quality shea butter. This is further processed into a wide range of ingredients for food and personal care applications. It is commonly used in our replacements for cocoa butter, as well as in ingredients for skin care, hair care and cosmetic products.

Investing in sustainability

A by-product of the process is a solid fibre material called shea meal, which has no nutritional value. Since 2024 the shea meal is used as fuel for two newly built biomass boilers. when fully operational, an approximate saving of 50,000 MT of CO₂ annually is expected, equivalent to about a 15 percent reduction compared to the group’s 2023 Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.