Two years ago, non-profit entrepreneur Leila Janah strolled into a small marketplace in Northern Uganda in search of a cure for her parched skin. She came across Nilotica balm, a cold-pressed oil which is derived from the locally grown Nilotica nut.

Within hours she found her skin moisturized and glowing far better than any product she had ever tried. “I started using it and I fell completely in love with this ingredient,” she explains of her decision to start LXMI, her organic two-product line of Nilotica-based creams—one, a pure concentrated Vaseline-like balm, the other, a daytime cream.

Nilotica is the purest nut-based oil you can find, harvested exclusively from the 20-year-old trees that line the Nile River in an industrially untouched part of Africa. As a result, the nut maintains its purity and nutrients like essential fatty acids, vitamin A, and allantoin, an enzyme which promotes healthy cell development.

She attributes much of her success to her knowledge of the people in the remote Northern Uganda region where she has worked for years, some of whom are local war widows who work with her as harvesters. “They earn at least three times the local wages so it is a win for the consumer, and a win for the community, who for the first time are able to earn an actual living,” she explained. Here, the beauty guru explains why this balm is all you need to get flawless skin.

First and foremost—what is so special about this nut? Why is it such a miracle worker for the skin?

Nilotica is a rare type of shea butter, but I don’t even call it shea butter. It’s as different as night and day from the shea butter that most people have. It’s special because it only grows at the Nile River, the only place the nuts grow wild. So the nuts fall to the ground and are collected by the women.

It has 25 percent more oleic acid than traditional shea butter which is important because that’s the hydration component, so it’s packed with this essential fatty acid your skin needs. It’s good for acne prone skin, as opposed to products which strip your skin of natural oils and make your skin overproduce natural oils, which leads to acne.

The texture is amazing, we add nothing to it, and we get a balm. It’s packed with vitamins A, E, and K, so it’s a great way to get these vitamins into your skin. The nut itself has natural preservatives, so it doesn’t require any other preservatives. Also we made the packaging black to avoid UVA rays from getting into the product and jeopardizing the ingredient.