Members of the Global Shea Alliance, GSA, have committed to the Action for Shea Parklands Initiative to restore 4,000,000 hectares of Shea parklands in Africa by 2030.
The President and Women’s group representative on GSA, Mamatou Djaffo, led the declaration at the just concluded 2024 Shea Conference in Abuja with the theme “Bridging the Gap.”
“We commit to achieve the following results; 10,000,000 new Shea and native trees will be nurtured, 10,000,000 women Shea collectors and processors will revitalize parklands, 10 countries will partner and improve their policies regarding Shea parklands management.” Djaffo declared.
“We will work collaboratively to achieve this objective in partnership with women Shea producers, follow GSA members, government institutions, national associations and other stakeholders” she added.
Call for Action
President of the National Shea Product Association of Nigeria and member executive committee of GSA, Mohammed Kotangora, said that with the call for action for Shea Parklands, Nigeria aims to plant at least 10 million Shea trees by 2030.
“The call for action has just been pronounced today at this meeting and we at our level have set a target we plan that if we can export 1 million tons of Shea butter at 2000 dollar per ton it means we can generate two billion dollar and currently we are exporting 400,000 metric tons, so our goal is to achieve the export of 1 million tones.” He said.
Kotangora noted that the planting is meant to secure a future for Shea trees across West Africa as they are presently endangered species.
“People cut Shea trees for numerous reasons, some cut it for charcoal and the demand for Shea keeps increasing daily, so we feel for us not to be out of the market we must plant, we will work with both individuals and the private sector and government organization to plant more trees.”
“Presently Nigeria accounts for 52% of the world concentration of Shea trees and as of yesterday the value is at about 2.7 billion dollars which means we need to work hard we need to work with various government institutions responsible so that they can support us collate data work with us.”
Shakirat Sadiq
