KAMPALA, Uganda — The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has approved a significant grant of $6.7 million (approximately 2.2 billion Ugandan shillings) aimed at protecting endangered shea nut trees in Uganda’s Acholi and Lango sub-regions. The funding will also support crucial climate resilience initiatives for the communities dependent on these vital trees.
Approved on June 5, 2025, the grant will finance the “Building a Climate Resilient and Sustainable Shea Landscape in Northern Uganda” project, slated to run from 2025 to 2029.
This ambitious project, focused on safeguarding shea tree parklands, will be implemented by Conservation International in collaboration with Uganda’s Ministry of Water and Environment and the Africa Innovations Institute.
The project is set to benefit four districts: Agago, Kitgum, Pader, and Otuke, which collectively boast an estimated 15,000 hectares of shea trees. Charity Nalyanya, the Africa Senior Director for Technical Oversight at GEF, revealed that the initiative will directly impact 4,320 individuals living across 4,500 hectares within these four districts, with a commitment that at least 60% of the project beneficiaries will be women.
Nalyanya highlighted the historical connection between the region’s people and shea, while acknowledging emerging threats.
“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,” she explained.
The number of shea nut trees in Uganda has experienced a rapid decline over the past three decades, primarily due to factors such as deforestation, prolonged drought, and extensive land development.
In 2023, the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) estimated that districts in northern Uganda, where shea nut trees are endemic, have lost a staggering 40% of their shea tree population.
Furthermore, 30% of trees in specific districts like Adjumani, Madi Okollo, Otuke, Agago, Kitgum, and Kaabong were lost within a mere 20-year span.
Conrad Newton, Senior Coordinator for Brand and Communications Officer at Conservation International, emphasized in a press statement the severe impact of climate change on shea nut tree yields in northern Uganda, citing extreme heat.
“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 affirmed.
The project is designed to stabilize and sustain shea production through a blend of large and small-scale interventions. These include enhancing local policies and decision-making regarding land and natural resources, supporting agroforestry planning and training workshops, making the commercial shea value chain more inclusive for women and young people, restoring shea tree cover, monitoring tree populations, and expanding communities’ access to alternative financing for climate-resilient livelihoods.
Nalyanya expressed optimism about the project’s impact on local communities.
“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,” she stated.
Experts corroborate that shea trees in northern Uganda have become less productive during periods of water stress, a direct consequence of climate change.
Carlos Manuel Rodriquez, GEF CEO and chairperson, reiterated the necessity of such climate-smart initiatives in bolstering economic and food security as climate change intensifies.
“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 affirmed.
Jean Olanya, a shea butter product dealer in Gulu City, suggested that the newly approved funds should be utilized to strengthen the shea nut value chain. Her aim is to protect rural women, particularly 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 observed.
She further noted that the effects of climate change have led to a sharp increase in shea nut prices, from 300 shillings per kilogram in 2014 to 2,000 shillings in 2024, predicting a rise to 2,500 shillings per kilogram this year, unlikely to fall below 2,000 shillings.
“But also because many people have taken an interest in shea nuts, the price keeps rising,” Olanya added.
Maurine Ojok, a board member at Acholi Shea Cooperative Society, urged project implementers to raise local awareness about the value of shea nut trees. She highlighted that many community members, particularly in Agago district, unknowingly harm the trees by sinking nails into them, believing they merely occupy farm space.
The shea nut tree was officially placed on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of threatened species in 1998.
The global shea market is a multi-billion-dollar industry, valued at over $2.4 billion in 2024 and projected to reach $4.4 billion by 2033. A 2024 Uganda Shea Market Study by Climate Smart Jobs (CSJ) estimates that approximately 2.5 million women in Uganda rely on the shea butter value chain for their livelihoods.
