Wonderful Amazing African Black Soap

You may have heard about African Black Soap (ABS). It’s a dark brown, usually mottled bar of soap, and sometimes it is quite soft. It originated in West Africa – Ghana, Nigeria and Cote D’Ivoire, and it is GREAT for your skin!

The main oils used in ABS are coconut oil and at least 45% shea butter. Both are fantastic for your skin. ABS is a good treatment for dry and irritated skin. It is antibacterial, and had been used to treat psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis and acne.

It is said to balance oily skin, hydrate, promote clear complexions, and even skin tone.

The original ABS handmade natively in Africa is a thick liquid or soft solid made from whatever is at hand, usually plantain skins and cocoa pods that have been burned to a charcoal. The charcoal is then boiled to extract a mild alkali called potash (chemical name - potassium hydroxide).

Oils are extracted from coconuts and shea trees, and the potash mixed with the oils, and heated. When the mixture starts to thicken, other ingredients are added – honey, aloe, fragrant oils, and other natural ingredients.

Soap starts to form around the edges, and this is scraped out and put into molds where it hardens over a period of a few weeks.

Traditionally made like this, there is little or no quality control. It is impossible to measure or predict the amount of caustic potassium hydroxide that will end up in the finished soap, or the percentage of oils and other ingredients. Made traditionally, it’s not really “safe” soap like we use in the West.

I decided to try to reproduce the traditional African Black Soap. I wanted to keep the formula as original and natural as I could while still conforming to Western “best practices” and quality control procedure. The soap had to have all the benefits of the original, but I wanted a harder bar with a pH that I could control.

It’s not easy to find plantain skins and cocoa pods in Memphis, Tennessee, but I eventually found a supplier out of state and made a charcoaling oven out of an old barbeque.

After a few computer models I made a batch. It was good, but it was really difficult to control, and it was way too hard to make. A few more computer models and a few batches later and I finally landed on a formula and a process that produced a great bar of African Black Soap that passed quality control, and that’s what C&L makes today.

We add no scent to our ABS. We prefer the mild natural, earthy scent of its organic shea butter and plantain/cocoa charcoal.

Our African Black Soap is a Western style bar of hard soap containing 45% shea butter, with coconut oil, palm oil, nutrient-rich, vitamin-rich charcoal from plantain skins and cocoa pods, honey, aloe vera, and a few secret ingredients.

Try C&L African Black Soap. You can order it online at our website, or you can pick it up from one of our retail locations (call first) or from our booth at a farmer’s market or a festival.