Dora Torwiseh
Interview with Dora Torwiseh
CEO AND FOUNDER, NUTS FOR GROWTH
Lives in: Ghana
Dora Torwiseh, a Ghanaian entrepreneur and CEO of the oilseed processing company Nuts for Growth, has tapped into the potential of shea nuts, which are indigenous to Africa. The global demand for shea butter, extracted from these nuts, is projected to exceed US$3.5 billion by 2028, driven partly by its use in personal care products like lotions and moisturisers, as well as in food items such as chocolates and ice cream. In northern Ghana, shea trees grow predominantly in the wild, and the nuts are harvested by women who collect them after they fall to the ground.
Taking a traditional industry to the next level
Torwiseh grew up in the Tumu region in Ghana’s Upper West, near the border with Burkina Faso. Her small-scale farming community faced widespread poverty, with limited economic opportunities and low levels of education. Despite this, the region had a valuable resource – shea nuts – which many people collected on a small scale. Torwiseh’s family also participated in this trade. “My parents would wake me up between 3am and 4am so that we could pick quickly and come back home,” she recalled in an interview with How we made it in Africa on the sidelines of the recent Standard Bank Africa Unlocked conference in Cape Town.
Despite the modest scale of her family’s shea nut activities, it provided enough income to send Torwiseh to school. After completing her education, she secured corporate jobs in the capital, Accra, working for companies like Nestlé – a rare achievement for someone from her background. However, she wasn’t fulfilled in these roles, troubled by the hardships her community continued to face. During this time, she realised the potential that the shea nuts in her region held. So she quit her job with the aim of elevating the region’s shea nut industry.
The shea nut sector in her area faced several challenges, including the lack of large-scale aggregation among nut collectors, which deterred international buyers seeking to buy in large quantities. Collectors were also exploited by middlemen, who drove to villages offering low prices for the nuts. The women, unable to access broader markets, were effectively price takers.
To address this, Torwiseh began organising the local shea nut pickers. “I was moving from door to door, community to community, town to town – trying to engage them so that we can work together to unlock this opportunity that is within us as a region and as a country. And thank God it worked out,” she explained.
After organising the local shea nut pickers, Torwiseh faced the next challenge: finding a market for the shea nuts. She began by sending samples to global buyers, but securing international clients proved to be a long and arduous process. At times, she would arrange for large quantities of nuts to be brought to a location to meet with a potential client, only for them not to show up.
Persistence paid off when Torwiseh secured a Dutch buyer, now part of the US-headquartered agribusiness company Bunge, which remains a major client of Nuts for Growth. Today, Nuts for Growth connects over 80,000 women with global buyers, including other clients such as American commodities giant Cargill.
Beyond market access, Nuts for Growth supports the women in various ways, such as providing them with seedlings to cultivate vegetables, spices, and other crops during the off-season for shea.
Torwiseh has invested in infrastructure, including a storage warehouse and a crushing plant that processes shea nuts into crude butter. Over the years, Nuts for Growth has expanded its operations to include sourcing soya beans from local farmers, which are processed at the company’s factory. These soya bean products primarily serve the domestic market. The factory has a combined crushing capacity of 450 tonnes per day for both shea kernels and soya beans.
Additionally, the company has further diversified its revenue streams by exporting shea cake – a by-product of shea processing – to countries like Türkiye and China, where it is used as animal feed.
Navigating export markets
Torwiseh advises entrepreneurs looking to export agricultural products from Africa to first study the international market and identify which crops are not produced locally in certain countries.
She explained that production costs in regions like West Africa are often higher than in more developed markets because local producers typically lack the advanced technology available elsewhere. For instance, she won’t market her soya bean products in Brazil because the country already has a sophisticated soya bean industry. However, she would target Brazil with her shea products, as they do not have a local supply.
“Not every country will be interested to come to Africa to buy certain things because they may be growing even more in their country at a reduced cost … You need to know things that are exportable and things that cannot be exported,” she said.