‘In 2004 I took note of an ‘international investor’ who was buying Shea butter and Shea kernels from local collectors, mostly impoverished rural women in my home area in Acholi. I noted the ‘investor’ was not offering collectors fair trade terms. I took the initiative to learn more about Shea butter and recognized it to be a high quality product. I invested in getting knowledge about the Shea butter value chain, including taking atraining course with the America Shea Butter Institute. I used my new learning and knowledge to successfully bring an honest and charitable approach to the Shea butter market, delivering Premium Grade A Organic Nilotica Shea Products. While ensuring the strongest link in the Lalida Shea value chain, the collectors, are paid fair.’

Margaret talks us through her early days as an entrepreneurial nine-year-old who paid her own school fees by selling orange juice from her father’s trees sweetened with sugar cane at the local market; the foundation of Blessed Organic Release Nilotica Shea; ‘skilling and enabling our strategic partners, thousands of disadvantaged women and youth in Acholi, to earn a living’; climate resilience; and creating economic opportunities for women in local communities. Remarkably, she says, the shea tree, once it becomes productive, can continue to bear fruit for up to three hundred years. That’s a long time, even for a tree.

Our thanks to Margaret Laloyo for taking the time to share her knowledge and experience with us - you can find out more about Blessed Organic Release here: https://blessedorganic.org/what-we-do/

And thanks to you, our listeners. See you next time,

Josephine

Raymond Kakuba is the National Co-ordinator of the Nilotica Shea Alliance, and has been working alongide the Climate Smart Jobs project. In this conversation he talks to us about shea products and the economic opportunities that shea cultivation represent for women in particular. (Nilotica, he says, is a premium version of all the shea varieties.) He talks about how historically women have always been intricately involved in shea production, how it empowers them economically, and the importance of maintaining the landscape where shea can grow successfully. Since shea only blooms once a year, work is underway to ensure than women have other ways of earning income at other times of the year including through harvesting honey, agroforestry and bean and soy production. At the same time, destruction of shea trees for charcoal production is a growing problem, as are population pressures, mining and agricultural expansion. Fascinating, complex stuff.

You can find out more about the Nilotica Shea Alliance here:
https://www.niloticashea.org/about.html

Thanks for listening, and see you next time -

Josephine