Rows of women sit low to the ground in the central Nigerian town of Bida, holding sticks that rise and fall in a steady rhythm.

The air is filled with the dull thud of wood against shell – the dark sun-dried, brown exterior of the shea fruit giving way to reveal the hard nut inside.

The produce, harvested in the wild after falling from the trees, is being readied for the middlemen to collect and then supply factories.

These are the early stages of a process that ends with shea butter on the counters of cosmetics shops across the world – as well as in other products such as chocolate.

Women in Nigeria – which accounts for nearly 40% of the world’s shea crop – are at the heart of the industry, but their livelihoods have been threatened by a dramatic recent change in government policy.

In late August, in the midst of the harvest season, the authorities announced a six-month ban on the export of the raw nut.

The intention was to boost local production of the finished butter – as opposed to the nuts – and so increase the amount of the profit which stays in Nigeria. But the sudden shift has led to a fall in demand for the shea nut as there is not enough local capacity to process all of the country’s harvest.

The reduction in demand has led to a collapse in the price of shea nuts, which in turn has meant that the income from their work is no longer enough for the women to live on.

In Niger state alone, where Bida is located, hundreds of thousands of women are believed to depend on some part of the shea production chain.

Hajaratu Isah, 40, who has been preparing the fruit all her adult life, tells the BBC that the government’s new policy has left her, her family and other women in the community struggling to survive.

Ms Isah lives with 11 other people, including her six children, and has a recurring eye condition, conjunctivitis, that flares up when the weather changes and requires regular medication.

“We are feeling hopeless. We cannot eat, we do not have money, and our children can no longer go to school,” she says.

Before the export ban, she earned up to 5,000 naira ($3.30; £2.45) a day, enough to cover school fees, which she paid daily, and her medicine. Now, her income has dropped to less than half that.

“Since the announcement, we have been suffering. It does not affect only us but the entire chain of people working here, including the labourers,” she adds, referring to the men who are paid to load the lorries with the sacks full of shea nuts.

Their pay has also halved over the last few weeks.

The income from her work was enough to sustain Fatima Ndako, 55, and her household of 14, including her seven children and several grandchildren.

“When I heard about the export ban, I could not sleep… the money we make is what we use to feed our families,” she says.

“We are appealing to President Bola Tinubu to allow exportation again so that our children will not be pushed into illicit acts.”

The global shea industry is estimated to be worth some $6.5bn (£5bn) but despite being the world’s biggest producer, Nigeria earns just a tiny fraction of that sum. Tinubu’s export ban was aimed at claiming a bigger share and improving the lives of all those down the value chain.

Central to this is the expansion of local processing as well as improving the quality of the final product.

One of the key projects driving this change is a factory owned by Salid Agriculture Nigeria Limited in Kudu, also in Niger state.

The plant, which is owned by an ally of the current government, has been described as Africa’s largest facility dedicated to just producing shea butter, boasting an annual production capacity of 30,000 tonnes. It aims to produce butter for cosmetics, food and pharmaceuticals.

The export ban came into effect just two weeks after this new factory was opened but overall there are not enough processing plants in Nigeria to cope with all the shea nuts that could be harvested.

Traders are now finding that they have stocks that they can only sell at a loss.

“The ban is not fair. Had there been notification, we would have prepared,” one middleman tells the BBC.

Although officials say they consulted industry leaders and conducted surveys, it seems that many in the supply chain were left in the dark.

Unsurprisingly, Ali Saidu, Salid’s managing director, sees the opportunity in the export ban.

“We are seeing so many responses now from shea nut suppliers,” he says. Before the ban, Mr Salid rarely received calls from traders. “Immediately after, they began calling us to ask how they could supply.”

He is also benefitting from lower prices, as before the export ban Mr Saidu’s firm struggled to match the money on offer from international buyers.

These global players shifted to Nigeria after Burkina Faso introduced its own export ban in September 2024, followed by similar restrictions in Mali, Ivory Coast and Togo.

Ghana is planning a phased ban on raw shea exports by 2026 alongside investments in factories that can process nuts into butter.

Mobola Sagoe, head of Shea Origin and ambassador of the government-backed Shea Nigeria initiative, which promotes local processing and certification, stresses that scaling-up must be done carefully.

“Nigeria has the capacity to take charge of the shea butter industry. But standards must be in place,” she says.

Kingsley Uzoma, who advises the president on agricultural policy, defends the export ban on the grounds that Nigeria needs to benefit more from its natural resource and believes that the lives of the women involved in the industry will be improved.

“For decades, women have been stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty, living in penury while middlemen and foreign processors reap the billions.

“This policy is about changing that dynamic, empowering our women, and giving Nigeria its rightful place in the market,” he says, adding that this was only a six-month suspension meant to force both local and international players to invest in Nigeria’s processing capacity.

“If you delay bold reforms, the beneficiaries of the old exploitative system will only keep asking for more time.”

He argues that export bans in neighbouring countries have helped local processing there.

The National Association of Shea Products of Nigeria (Naspan), the sector’s umbrella body, has backed the ban as a “strategic and critical repositioning” of the industry. But it urged the government to offer some relief to traders holding large stocks.

Still, Nigeria’s shea processing capacity remains limited and concentrated in a handful of large factories.

For smaller producers and cooperatives, access to such facilities is out of reach, and questions linger over whether a six-month suspension is long enough to build the infrastructure, incentives and supply chains needed for real transformation.

The government’s target is that by 2030, Nigeria will capture at least a fifth of the value of the global shea market.

But currently for the women in Niger state, already squeezed by falling prices and the demands of large households, the promise feels distant.

Survival comes first: feeding children, paying for medicine and making it through another shea season.