Seeds of Change towards Forests of Prosperity in Ghana

Ghana’s shea industry generates employment and income for about a million rural women in northern Ghana. These women are mostly involved in gathering and processing shea fruits into butter. Many people across Ghana and beyond have developed strong taste for the shea butter as a great cosmetic. The shea trees usually grow naturally in traditional farms. These are integrated with crops on smallholder farms, creating an agroforestry landscape resilient to climate change.

 

Briwana Nape and her colleagues are making efforts to contribute to restoring the degraded lands. Her community is one of the 20 communities that have set up tree nurseries to plant shea and other native species like rosewood, tamarind, mahogany, dawadawa, African grapes, kapok, and baobab to restore the degraded shea parklands in the Northern Savannah Zone. 

 

The nursery initiative falls under the Ghana Shea Landscape Emissions Reduction project, being implemented by the Forestry Commission (FC) of Ghana, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Global Shea Alliance and multiple national and local institutions, civil society organizations and private sector actors. The project is being supported by the Green Climate Fund (GCF).