Uniting across the shea belt: from Ghana to Ethiopia
20th October 2025
Share
Pouring shea nuts into the machine for processing.
In a quiet field in northern Ghana, a low building hums with activity. Engines whirr, wheels turn, and the air is thick with the scent of earth as a machine crushes thousands of shea nuts.
Today, the site has special visitors. The Tree Aid Ethiopia team has travelled over 3000 miles to see the unit in action and learn from Tree Aid’s Ghana team. Their goal: to take these lessons home and apply them to a new shea project launching in Ethiopia.
Though separated by distance, both countries share the same vast stretch of land known as the shea belt – a semi-arid region perfect for growing one of Africa’s most iconic trees: the shea. Together, they’re working to protect it from mounting threats like climate change, deforestation, and land degradation.
This is the story of how community experts from Ghana and Ethiopia are sharing knowledge and resilience along the shea belt to safeguard a tree that sustains both people and the planet.
Shea butter: a key to protection
The finished product: shea butter ready to be sold at local markets.
Shea butter – a creamy, natural fat made from shea nuts – is prized across Africa and globally, for its moisturising skincare benefits. In West Africa, where over 90% of the world’s production comes from, shea butter is often dubbed ‘women’s gold,’ for the money that many rural communities, especially women, can earn from selling it. More than a product; it’s a source of independence, and community connection.
But across the entire shea belt from West to East Africa, deforestation, agricultural expansion, and limited land access have pushed this tree species to the brink.
Slow to mature – often taking 15 to 25 years to bear fruit – shea is frequently cleared for faster-growing, higher yielding crops like maize. Yet with the loss of these and other native trees, soil loses fertility, leaving it vulnerable to erosion, drought, and desertification – only deepening the cycle of food insecurity.
In Ghana, our long-standing shea projects have shown that protecting shea trees helps not only to restore vital forest areas, but to break cycles of poverty by raising household incomes.
How? With the right tools, training and understanding of how to care for them, shea trees can become an important tool for boosting earnings.
Community-led training for farmers in sustainable land management, tree pruning, and natural regeneration techniques, is key. Women’s cooperatives play a central role too – processing and selling shea butter through value chains that ensure better prices and stable demand. The result is a stronger local economy, where people and nature grow together.
Uniting for change along the shea belt
Community members gather together in the shade, Ethiopia.
In Ethiopia’s Gambella region – the shea belt’s most easterly point – shea trees face many of the same threats seen in Ghana: deforestation, agricultural expansion, and the pressures of a changing climate.
Traditional methods for crushing and processing shea nuts are also time-consuming and labour-intensive, often taking days to produce a single batch of butter. That’s why communities are taking action through our new Sustainable Shea project.
Community experts from our shea initiatives in Ghana are sharing their experience with local groups in Ethiopia – passing on practical knowledge about harvesting, processing, and storage. With the right tools, training, and sustainable techniques, processing times are shortened, productivity increases, and shea trees are better protected and allowed to thrive.
Through project visits, technical workshops, and peer exchanges, this collaboration is helping to restore thousands of hectares of degraded land, improve soil health, and create new opportunities to earn a living from shea while restoring natural ecosystems.
Looking ahead
Shea butter waiting to be churned.
Back in northern Ghana, the shea processing unit is in full swing. Huge metal bowls brim with thick, brown shea paste, ready to be churned into the rich, yellow butter. Around them, the visiting Ethiopia team listen closely and ask questions, learning each step of the process. Soon, they’ll take this knowledge back to Gambela to begin the first phase of their new shea project.
As our work in Gambela grows, so too does the network of people protecting the shea tree across Africa. From the savannahs of Ghana to the dry forests of Ethiopia, hope for the shea tree’s survival is rooted in moments like this – communities coming together to restore land and building sustainable futures through shea.