- For International Women’s Day, Mongabay puts a spotlight on a community forest restoration effort to protect Ghana’s shea trees, which are economically and ecologically important species for the country.
- The majority of participants are women, as they traditionally play a central role in every part of the value chain, from harvesting shea nuts to producing shea butter.
- The people from Yazori and Mognoni have so far planted over 53,000 seedlings over about 158 hectares of land to divert attention away from indigenous shea trees, which locals increasingly cut down for charcoal and firewood.
- The other trees have many benefits over shea species, like growing faster and being more resistant to fires, but shea trees still produce more efficient charcoal and women depend on the project to pay for new seedlings.
As the growing demand for charcoal and firewood hastens the decline of shea trees in Ghana, communities living on the fringes of the country’s Mole National Park are planting fast-growing trees of other species as a buffer.
The logic of the effort is for communities to instead cut down the fast-growing tree species for their energy needs, leaving the native shea species behind for sustainable harvesting of key commodities for trade, like shea nuts and butter. So far, the trees have many benefits over shea species, like growing faster and being more resistant to fires, but shea trees also produce more efficient charcoal.
Around 300 community members in the towns of Mognori and Yazori are engaged in the effort by planting the seedlings of two species, the Gum Arabic tree (Vachellia nilotica) and Paperback Thorn (Vachellia sieberiana) (both formally known as acacia) and occasionally selling the firewood. The majority, about 60%, are women, who typically take dominant roles in the country’s shea harvesting and trade.
They have so far planted 53,434 seedlings on 158.11 hectares (390 acres) of land as part of a forest landscape restoration and sustainable wood energy project by the IUCN and A Rocha Ghana.
As the seedlings grow into trees, women told Mongabay they are one of the best firewood substitutes for indigenous tree species of shea. Taking part in this effort, they said, helps protect their livelihoods and makes them travel shorter distances for firewood.
“Women can now depend on acacia trees [former name] for firewood instead of cutting indigenous species like shea trees, which are of a high economic value,” said Abdulai Mariama, a local woman from the Yazori community. “We can now harvest and sell the acacia wood as firewood to earn extra income while reserving shea trees only for their butter.”
Ghana is one of the largest exporters of shea nuts and shea butter in the world, and women traditionally play a central role in every part of the value chain. Across Africa, about 16 million women depend on shea trees for their livelihood. In 2023, the global market for shea butter was estimated at $2.75 billion, with projections indicating a growth to $5.58 billion by the next decade.
However, at the same time, Ghana lost 24% (1.64 million hectares) of its tree cover between 2000 and 2023 due to agriculture and logging for charcoal and firewood. Part of this deforestation impacts shea trees, worrying the vice president, who declared the threats a national priority.
New trees better than old trees?
Among the five regions in Ghana, shea trees are predominantly grown in the northern region of Ghana in the savannahs. Although the newly planted trees are not indigenous to the specific region, Dari Adishetu, a female farmer from Mognori said they are fast-growing and drought-resilient.
“The trees serve as windbreaks and have medicinal benefits. Not only are acacia grown as ornamental plants and are a food source for livestock, but their flowers contain nectar that attracts bees.”
However, these benefits are not only why the new trees are preferred as one of the best substitutes to protect shea trees, which can take between eight to 25 years to bear fruit. The Gum Arabic and Paperback Thorn trees are also extremely resilient to severe wildfires. “While many other acacia species have longer gestation periods, the drought-tolerant nilotica [Gum Arabic tree] germinates in weeks and about 70 cm [27 inches] per year and regenerates fast when cut down,” she told Mongabay.
“In such cases, acacia plantations serve as a green belt to prevent fire and protect areas that are under restoration,” said Asumah Rakuma, another woman from Mognori.
Godwin Evenyo Dzekoto, a manager at A Rocha Ghana, told Mongabay the trees also improve soil fertility which helps establish healthy soil conditions for indigenous species like shea if they are planted alongside one another. Such agroforestry systems are traditionally known as parklands, ideal conditions for shea trees to flourish and help them produce for up to 250 years when properly maintained.
“Integrating acacia into farms for agroforestry provides optimum microclimatic conditions for the survival of the shea and other indigenous tree species,” Dzekoto told Mongabay.
However, climate change and unknown factors have impacted shea harvesting by slowing down the regeneration of trees, he said.
With many regions in the country reeling under the impacts of erratic rainfall and longer dry spells and the species being an economically viable alternative for shea, researcher Abukari Alhassan said the Gum Arabic tree they plant ticks all the boxes.
“While many other acacia species have longer gestation periods, the drought-tolerant nilotica grows 70 cm per (27 inches) year and regenerates when cut down,” said Alhassan, Director for the West African Center for Shea Innovation and Research (WACSIR) in the University for Development Studies.
“In a country where communities depend on traditional medicine, the medicinal properties of this species could make it the most desirable.”
Stemming the downfalls
However, Dzekoto explained that the Gum Arabic and Paperback Thorn trees emit less carbon than the shea species as they have a smaller biomass. This is a downside, he told Mongabay, as it makes them less efficient as firewood and charcoal. “People prefer the shea species for charcoal because it produces heavier charcoal than acacia species, which makes the Indigenous trees susceptible to firewood.”
For example, shea tree wood is considered the best fuel for brewing pito, which is a local beer made from fermented millet in the upper west as well as northern regions in Ghana. Alhassan said a shea has an average of about 242 total carbon per tree, while the other tree species have about 194.4 total carbon per tree.
But, according to him, because shea trees sequester more carbon than the ones they currently plant for the project, it reinforces the importance “to preserve the shea as an environmental good.”
To ensure the pressure doesn’t build on shea trees, Dzekoto said other species like Dawadawa (Parkia biglobosa), African mahogany (Khaya senegalensis), Afzelia (Afzelia Africana), African Rosewood (Pterocarpus erinaceus) are also grown by the community women to protect shea trees from being felled for firewood. “With increasing human and climatic pressures on shea trees, the project has encouraged both the communities for the plantation of other indigenous trees to mitigate the dependency on shea trees,” Dzekoto said.
Although the Gum Arabic and Paperback Thorn trees look promising from a socio-economic and climate lens, the women still depend on the project to pay for the acacia seedlings and support the replanting of them once existing acacia trees have been cut down.
An assessment of tangible impact is being undertaken by the University for Development Studies, said Dzekoto. They plan to release the reports by the end of the year.
Banner image: Shea butter production process near Chiana, Kassena Nankana District, Ghana. Image by Axel Fassio/CIFOR via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Citations:
Gordon, C. E., Price, O. F., Tasker, E. M., & Denham, A. J. (2016). Acacia shrubs respond positively to high severity wildfire: Implications for conservation and fuel hazard management. The Science of the Total Environment, 575, 858–868. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.09.129
Derbile, E. K., Kanlisi, S. K., & Dapilah, F. (2022). Mapping the vulnerability of indigenous fruit trees to environmental change in the fragile savannah ecological zone of Northern Ghana. Heliyon, 8(6), e09796. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e09796
Idrees, M., Javaid, S., Nadeem, S., Khurshid, F., Parveen, A., Malik, A., . . . Fatima, S. (2024). Antimicrobial and Hepatoprotective Properties of Pods of Acacia nilotica (L.) Willd. ex Delile: In Vivo and In Silico Approaches. Dose-Response, 22(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/15593258241308998
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