摘要：In order to diversify the sources of incomes of the country, to reduce the financial risks and to improve the farmers’ revenues, the government of Benin decided to promote new agricultural sectors. One of those new sub-sectors is shea tree which is targeted in this study. Due to the painful of certain stages of shea butter processing, the semi-mechanization was initiated. The paper uses data from a stratified random sample of 198 shea butter producers to assess the adoption and impact of this semi-mechanization in North-Benin. A multinomial probit model is estimated to analyze the factors which explain the adoption of each type of technology. A counterfactual approach drawing from a modern evaluation theory is used to evaluate the impact of this semi-mechanization on producers’ incomes. It result that the adoption of the crusher is influenced by the presence of electricity in the village and by the availability of the family labor. As for the shea nuts grinder, the determinants of its adoption are the membership to a shea butter producers association, the literacy in local language and the availability of the family labor. The results also reveal that the adoption of these technologies increases significantly the producers’ incomes by 103,914 FCFA per year.
