KAL AWINYA, Uganda – In rural Uganda, 34-year-old Adong Betty from Kal Awinya village shares how shea nuts sustain her family and community. Her own childhood was marked by active participation in collecting and processing shea nuts with her mother, instilling in her a deep respect for this tradition.
Shea nuts are a critical part of her livelihood: she collects, dries, processes and sells shea nuts and their byproducts, like shea oil and butter. The income earned goes toward essential needs such as school fees for her children, medical expenses, and buying clothes.
Betty advocates for preserving shea trees amid deforestation threats, teaching future generations their value, including in in cooking and as a remedy for skin ailments. Her story highlights resilience, cultural heritage, and the vital role of the shea tree in transforming lives.
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Banner image: Adong Betty processing shea nuts. Image ©Stephen Okello.
Shea trees are falling fast across Africa, victims of new pressures (commentary)
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
I grew up knowing the benefits of shea nuts.
Back in the days, I used to see my mother collect shea nuts. We would go under the shea trees together.
My mother would roast and melt it, make bean stew, and we would eat with it.
Sometimes she would slaughter chicken and eat with it.
Shea nuts can be made into body butter and soap.
When there is sickness, I use the money [from selling shea butter] to pay for treatment.
When school starts, I pay school fees with it.
The challenges we have right now are people coming from all around the country and cutting down shea trees.
This is making us worried because there are less and less shea trees.
Each tree takes about 7-8 years to start bearing fruits, so we plant them for our future generations.
I encourage the young generation to take up the shea butter industry
just like we learned from our mothers.
They will experience a good life from shea nut products.
They will experience a good life from shea nut products.