ABSTRACT
As the colonial era drew to a close and the economy of the savanna zone was reduced to an adjunct of the south in the area that would soon become the modern nation-state of Ghana, shea’s significance to the government agenda faded rapidly. Consisting almost entirely of the sale of shea nuts rather than butter, shea export, like that of a host of other commoditiesfrom cocoa to pineapples-was placed under the exclusive purview of the state marketing board, first known as the West African Produce Control Board and later as the Cocoa Marketing Board (Meredith 1988: 295). For all but a brief period in the 1950s, shea would remain in its domain through the early 1990s.
