The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kitgum, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Global Environmental Facility (GEF) has approved $ 6.7 million (approximately 2.2 billion shillings) for protecting shea nut trees in the Acholi and Lango sub-regions and supporting climate resilience initiatives by the people who depend on the endangered trees.
The grant was approved on June 5th, 2025, to fund the “Building a Climate Resilient and Sustainable Shea Landscape in Northern Uganda,” project, which will run from 2025 to 2029.
The project to protect the shea tree parklands will be implemented by Conservation International, in partnership with the Ministry of Water, Environment, and the Africa Innovations Institute.
The districts to benefit from the project include Agago, Kitgum, Pader, and Otuke, which collectively have an estimated 15,000 hectares of shea trees.
Charity Nalyanya, the Africa Senior Director, Technical Oversight at GEF, disclosed that the project will have 4,320 people living across 4,500 hectares in the four districts. At least 60% of the project beneficiaries will be women.
“This area and its people have a long history with shea, but new external pressures from climate change and global demand for the tree’s products are now threatening the traditional livelihoods of rural farmers, many of them women, who depend on shea trees to sustain their families and communities,” Nalyanya said.
The number of shea nut trees has dropped rapidly in Uganda in the last three decades, due to deforestation, prolonged drought, and land development.
The National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA ) in 2023 estimated that districts in northern Uganda where shea nut trees are endemic have lost 40% of shea nut trees, with 30% of the trees in Adjumani, Madi Okollo, Otuke, Agago, Kitgum and Kaabong district lost in 20 years.
Conrad Newton, the Senior Coordinator, Brand, and Communications Officer at Conservation International, said in a press statement that extreme heat due to climate change has affected the yields of shea nut trees in northern Uganda.
“Climate-smart efforts such as this GEF-funded project will be imperative in increasing economic and food security in the region as climate change accelerates,” Newton said.
The project aims to stabilize and sustain shea production through both large and small-scale interventions including: improving local policies and decision-making around land and natural resources; supporting agroforestry planning and training workshops; making the commercial shea value chain more inclusive to women and young people; restoring shea tree and monitoring tree-cover, and increasing communities’ access to alternative financing for climate-resilient livelihoods.
“At the current planned scale, I’m optimistic that this work will measurably support these rural communities who did so little to cause the current climate crisis now facing them. It comes down to climate justice,” Nalyanya said.
Experts say shea trees have become less productive in northern Uganda during seasons of water stress necessitated by climate change.
Carlos Manuel Rodriquez, the GEF CEO and chairperson, argued that climate-smart efforts such as the Building a Climate Resilient and Sustainable Shea Landscape in Northern Uganda will be imperative in increasing economic and food security in the region as climate change accelerates.
“Conservation International and the Global Environment Facility are committed to working alongside both local communities and national authorities to restore the vulnerable shea trees so that they can continue to provide for the region and the larger global community long-term,” Rodriquez said.
Jean Olanya, a dealer in shea butter products in Gulu City, suggested that the fund should be used to strengthen the shea nut value chain, to protect the rural women, especially the shea nut collectors, from exploitation.
“If they could help the shea nut collectors, buyers, and processors to sell at a uniform price, then the rural women would earn better from shea nuts, but that is lacking,” Olanya said.
Olanya, who has been dealing in shea butter products since 2017, said the effects of climate change on shea nut trees have led to a sharp rise in the price of shea nuts per kilogram from 300 shillings per kilogram in 2014 to 2,000 shillings per kilogram in 2024.
She predicts that this year the price will rise to 2,500 shillings per kilogram and will not reduce below 2,000 shillings.
“But also because many people have taken an interest in shea nuts, the price keeps rising,” Olanya said.
Maurine Ojok, a board member at Acholi Shea Cooperative Society, appealed to the implementers of the project to sensitise the locals on the value of shea nut trees, saying many members of the community still don’t know their value.
“Especially in Agago district, people still are killing shea nut trees by sinking nails through them, because they think it is occupying space on their farms,” Ojok said.
In 1998, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature placed shea nut trees on the Red List of threatened species.
The global shea market is a multi-billion-dollar industry estimated at over 2.4 billion dollars in 2024 and projected to reach 4.4 billion dollars by 2033.
A 2024 Uganda Shea Market Study by Climate Smart Jobs CSJ, indicates that an estimated 2.5 million women in Uganda depend on the shea butter value chain.
****
URN
We need such an intervention in Arua District. These trees are being felled like they don’t matter. Even next to Ajia sub county offices this is still happening.