Saving shea: How a Ugandan woman is turning waste into clean energy

Known locally as moyao, the tree had shaped her childhood. Every morning, she and her friends gathered beneath its branches to eat its sweet, creamy fruit before walking to school. Its disappearance was not an isolated loss. Across northern Uganda, many more shea trees had been cut down for charcoal.

“I got concerned,” Atim, now in her mid-thirties and a climate activist, told Al Jazeera. “The destruction of shea trees is alarming. These trees need to be protected, but people also need an alternative source of fuel.”

Uganda loses an estimated 122,000 hectares of forest each year, largely to charcoal production and logging. With about 90 percent of households relying on charcoal for cooking, indigenous species such as shea and Afzelia africana continue to disappear. Research by Makerere University found that mature shea tree populations on fallow land fell from about 20 trees in 2008 to between 10 and 15 by 2017.

“There is still scant data on the declining shea tree population in northern Uganda,” Dr. Patrick Byakagaba, the Makerere University environmental researcher who led the study, told Al Jazeera. “More needs to be done to determine their density, sapling survival and regeneration.” Tracking the decline is difficult, he said, because charcoal producers often uproot entire trees, leaving no stumps behind to count.

While working in South Sudan, Atim met a woman in Yida making fuel briquettes from discarded shea husks. “I got curious. I knew this was something that could be replicated back home,” she recalled.

In 2023, she founded Moyao Africa Initiative, a social enterprise that turns shea waste into fuel briquettes, while helping women earn a living from processing shea butter. The initiative employs six staff and works with more than 1,200 women organised in savings groups to collect shea waste, produce briquettes and process butter.

“In most households, women carry the burden of finding cooking fuel. By training them to make and sell briquettes and shea butter, we’re creating an income while providing an affordable alternative to charcoal,” she said.

On a hot afternoon in Alebtong, 15 women sit on woven mats attending a training session led by Moyao Africa Initiative. They are chairpersons of savings groups from across the district, learning to turn discarded shea husks into cooking fuel. When the trainer asks about the process, the women answer almost in unison: collect the husks, crush them, mix.