Endangered Species Conservation for Shea Butter Trees with Mustafa Gerima

Shea is Uganda's un-mined Gold. Shea trees naturally exist in the Shea belt within parts of East and West Africa. The Ugandan Shea contains 50-60 percent Oleic acid, an essential ingredient in the production of soap, an excipient in pharmaceuticals and emulsifier in aerosols. No other countries in the world has this concentration. The global Shea butter market is USD 1.12 billion. In the year 2019, Uganda earned USD 706,000 from exports of Shea butter. There is a potential of this export tripling by 2025.

Why Shea conservation? Over 80% of Ugandan households use wood fuel from charcoal. Charcoal from Shea trees are more durable and preferred. As such, Shea butter trees have got to the red list of endangered species. On the other hand, Shea trees take up to 15 years to start fruiting but interestingly fruit for another 300 years. This makes them a tree for posterity. The COVID-19 pandemic has created more pressure on felling of Shea trees as Families look for quick source of income to recapitalize their enterprises. This has put immense threat towards extinction of the Shea butter trees.

Communities are reluctant to replant such a tree that takes long to fruit because they desire short term gains from enterprises with short gestation periods. As such, they forget the economic value of Shea butter. Suffice to mention also that Shea flowers provide excellent bee forage.

What this fund will do:-

This fund will assist in setting up Shea nursery bed of 200,000 seedlings output per year for communities so, the propagation is domesticated for increased conservation and carbon reduction.

This intervention is expected to directly and indirectly employ 100 and 200 women and youth respectively; as well as providing forage especially for honey bees that is responsible for pollinating over 60 percent of Ugandan crops.