Shea butter nilotica- Ugandan shea butter/ East African shea butter

SHEA BUTTER CROP, once neglected crop in the history of Uganda, today it is major healthy skin care products, environmental protection, biodiversity and export earning project in Uganda.
How we came to know the shea butter in Uganda: In 1990, I was assigned a job for National survey of edible oil industry in Uganda, by the Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industries and Fisheries. I was traveling all over Uganda and that time Uganda was under political turmoil, by Joseph Kony rebels in northern Uganda, a war against government.

I visited Catholic missions in Gulu, Kitgum, Lira. I saw some women grinding shea nut seeds in between two stones and processing. Grinded mass mixed with water was boiled in a saucepan for almost the full day, allowed to cool overnight, butter is skimmed out next day morning. I asked Father, what is this? He explained me that this is ‘MO-YAHO’, Local name of shea butter, community use it for cooking, women and children use it for body smearing instead of other skin care creams, like petroleum jelly. Myself being oil technologist, this become a very interesting subject for me.

Therefore, I bought one sack of shea nuts and started experiments on it, and goggled it, I found very interesting subject, shea butter, for skin care and other applications. Shea butter is a food of great significance for northern Ugandan populations for centuries. Our Ugandan women knows how to produce locally shea butter, the traditional method of production are unhygienic, a lot of labour involved, smoke penetrate inside the shea butter, resulting dark colour, smoky smell end product. Most of the healing properties are lost in this traditional method of production. Water used is of very poor quality.

I checked with the government agencies like UNBS, URA, UEPB, Min. of Agriculture, but unfortunately no data was available.

I decided to work on this project. We did a lot of experiments on it, we developed processing technologies, where most of the healing properties are retained in shea butter. Local communities have been cutting down trees for charcoal production. We approached the government to stop cutting trees, bill was passed in the parliament, but no one interested to implement the bill. I approached agriculture minister, but all my efforts were useless.

Finally, I god opportunities to meet His Excellency, The President of Uganda, I explained him all these challenges we have in the country. I told H.E. that one day this rare species will disappear from the earth. H.E. the President sent directive to all district to stop cutting the shea nut trees. Now cutting shea nut trees is banned in Uganda. I thank and salute the H.E. The President of Uganda. H. E. called me man of shea butter. It was very encouraging. Whenever we meet H.E. The President, always ask me how far your project of shea butter has gone.

We have invested 5 million USD in this project, we are the only company in the world manufacturing certified organic shea butter. We are certified organic by ECOCERT- SAA, since 2006, with NOP-USDA ORGANIC STANDARD, and EC ORGANIC STANDARD.

We work with local communities, we sensitise them, we created awareness, we trained them for harvesting, we provide free training twice in a year, refresh their training, we provide collection tools, we provide food, sugar, gum boots and mosquito nets etc.to our registered farmers. We have managed to stop cutting shea nut trees in northern Uganda. A great impact on biodiversity and environmental protection in the country.

We support to educate poor children, particularly orphan children, some of them are teacher, advocate, and consular now. We are supporting girl child education in northern Uganda. We support our collection team, mostly women. We have seen a great impact of our project in the life of rural women.

We surveyed that most of the patients in Lira hospital are not eating food/ meals, they swallow medicine without food, resulting in long recovery in sickness and more burden on the hospital. We decided as per my religion, serving food to a needy person is the best service to mankind. Therefore, GNOM starts serving 450 free meals every day in LIRA REGIONAL REFERREL HOSPITAL- LIRA for all admitted patients in the hospital.