Fear of snakebite is keeping Abiba from her own farm.

She hasn’t set foot in her fields since her baby was born

Shea harvesting has always been part of Abiba’s life — walking into the bush at dawn with the other women of Lingnung, gathering the fruit that’s fed her family for years. It’s work she’s proud of, in a place she loves.

But since her baby arrived, she hasn’t been back. The bush around Lingnung has always carried the risk of snakebite, and that risk became too much to carry once she had a child depending on her. So she’s stayed home. It isn’t only the harvest she’s missing — it’s the friends she used to walk out to the fields with. And it’s the days since, spent worrying how she’ll feed her children and herself without the income shea has always provided.

A pair of snake gaiters is a small thing to give. For Abiba, it’s the difference between staying home afraid and going back to the work — and the community — she loves.

Ghana’s shea economy runs on women’s labor — and rarely rewards it

Across northern Ghana, shea has always belonged to women. It’s collected, processed, and sold almost entirely by their hands — and for many families, it’s not supplemental income, it’s the only income. But the work is physically demanding and often dangerous, and where it isn’t enough, some women turn to small-scale mining instead: faster money, far more risk.

The women of Lingnung aren’t waiting for someone to solve this for them. They’re building the solution themselves — a cooperative-owned processing centre that keeps more of the value of their work in their own hands, on safer ground. Abiba is one of the women who will work there. Right now, she just needs to be able to get to the fields safely.

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This is the most immediate, most fundable need on the ground right now: getting the women of Lingnung equipped so they can work safely, before ground is even broken on the centre.

PPE is the first step toward something bigger. When women in northern Ghana get better processing infrastructure, the results are dramatic: one SNV-supported project cut processing time for an 85-kilogram bag of shea nuts from 22 hours to 8, raised participating women’s incomes by 45%, and lifted school enrollment among their children from 37% to 97%. That’s the kind of change this centre is built to deliver — and it starts with getting women like Abiba back into the fields safely.

Source: Give to Africa, “Empowering Ghana’s Women: The Heart of the Shea Value Chain,” May 2026