Surrounded by four children, Ladi Usman scoops shea nut paste from a plastic container into a metal pot on the stove in her cramped kitchen. Squinting to keep charcoal fumes out of her eyes, she stirs it with a bamboo stick, completing the final stages of eking out the valuable shea butter oils.

For the past two decades Usman, 39, has relied on shea nuts - and the oil they contain - to provide a livelihood for herself and her family in central Nigeria.

"I cook with it, I sell it and the money I get from it I use to take these children to school, to hospital and everything else," she told AFP. Together with 50 other women in a cooperative in the village of Kodo she extracts value from shea nuts that grow abundantly in Nigeria.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019