Academics and NGOs are turning to macadamias for food security and crop diversity in southern Ethiopia and Malawi, where traditional crop yields are plummeting due to the impact of climate change.
By Colleen Dardagan
Scaled macadamia production in Ethiopia has the potential to stave off food insecurity while simultaneously revitalising and restoring degraded agricultural land, according to a study by forestry development officials and academics in Addis Ababa.
Titled Macadamia integrifolia farming for sustainable development: Global experiences, opportunities and challenges for scaling up1, the 2025 study concludes that macadamias have “crucial” nutrients able to address malnutrition while warding off heart disease.
Further development of orchards in degraded or “sparsely treed agricultural and forest lands” has the potential for environmental restoration and the promotion of agroforestry or food forests that would not only mitigate food insecurity but alleviate land degradation that is particularly acute in tropical and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Macadamia nuts are rich in plant-based protein, fibre and energy-dense healthy fats, especially monounsaturated fatty acids and, according to the study, offer about 718kCAL per 100g of edible nuts, containing 14g of carbohydrates, 9g of dietary fibre, 8g protein and 76g of total fat and no cholesterol.
Additionally, the nuts contain antioxidants that modulate platelet activation and thrombosis and influence key cellular functions like mitochondrial activity and energy homeostasis, which support cardiovascular health.
The study describes macadamia production as a recognised pathway to poverty alleviation and improved livelihoods.
“The crop’s high market demand, both locally and internationally, provides smallholder farmers with a lucrative income source, thereby strengthening household food security. The integration of macadamia farming into existing agricultural systems can diversify income streams and reduce dependency on staple crops vulnerable to climate variability,” the research adds.
As an example of potential returns, South Africa’s macadamia farmers are estimating a return of R55/kg dry nut-in-shell at 2.5 tons dry nut-in-shell per hectare on average for the 2026 harvesting season.
Yitayal Addis Alemayehu who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Management, and Director for Community Engagement at Kotebe University of Education in Addis Ababa, and one of the authors of the study, said the development of macadamia orchards also showed promising potential in environmental remediation, especially in improving water quality through bio-waste applications. He said early research had shown that activated carbon derived from the nut shells effectively removed water pollutants like chromium and methylene blue.
“Implementing pilot-scale phytoremediation systems using macadamia waste, particularly in constructed wetlands and riparian buffers, could offer low-cost, community-based water treatment options for rural populations suffering from deteriorating water quality,” he said.
Furthermore, he added, the trees act as carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide and thereby mitigating climate change.
“The perennial nature of the trees means they foster a stable microclimate able to boost microbial activity, organic matter accumulation and nutrient cycling, so they strengthen long-term soil fertility, promoting climate-smart agroforestry and ecosystem resilience,” Alemayehu notes.
The philanthropic, Christian-based Integra Foundation introduced macadamia production in 2018 to Ethiopian coffee farmers whose livelihoods are increasingly threatened by the changing climate, particularly in the south of the country.
In a 2025 article published in the organisation’s newsletter, Integral3, Veronika Macsai, who is the Integra Director of Programmes, said the more than 15 million Ethiopians dependent on their coffee crop for income were becoming increasingly vulnerable as rising temperatures, erratic rainfall and new pests were hollowing out yields, particularly in the southern regions of Guji and West Guji.
She said the need for long-term, sustainable solutions able to build resilience among rural subsistence farmers was critical. “Since 2022 we have distributed more than 80 000 macadamia tree seedlings imported from Kenya, and built a local nursery in Bule Hora to grow grafted trees suitable for the Ethiopian conditions.”
The work was recently expanded, with plans to plant another 100 000 trees and provide training and information to a further 3 000 smallholder coffee farmers.
“We’re now seeing the first signs of flowering and nut formation on the early trees,” she said.
While the farmers had yet to harvest a crop, Macsai said they believed it was “on its way”.
The trees could continue to bear for at least 100 years, meaning the project was not only about helping subsistence farmers to survive,
but to adapt and thrive.
The Integra project has provided employment and downstream value-adds, such as farmer training, employment at their nursery and processing plant, as well as the creation of a model agroforestry farm and education centre at Bule Hora.
Similarly, research coming out of Malawi – the single most food-insecure country in Africa – suggests that the exponential growth of hectares under macadamia orchards in recent years would allow the country to use the nut to supplement local diet, which is heavily dependent on white maize.
In 2024, Dr Emmanuel Junior Zuza, a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Management and Sustainability at the Royal Agricultural University in Britain, wrote in his study titled Macadamia Nuts as a Supplement to Cereal-based diets in Malawi that the rapid expansion of orchards in the country offered potential benefits beyond just providing employment.
Currently, white maize accounts for more than 54% of the national caloric intake and is extensively cultivated across Malawi, with cassava, another vital food staple, providing about 15% of the calories consumed by the local populace. Rice, sorghum and millet are also traditional cereal crops, providing essential calories, nutrition and resilience for smallholder farmers.
According to Zuza, smallholder farmers in Malawi cultivate about 4.5 million hectares and occupy about 80% of all agricultural land. The estimated 2 million smallholder farmers contribute about 25% of the country’s GDP, 95% of the total agricultural labour force and nearly 70% of the agricultural produce, especially common beans, groundnuts, maize, soybeans, sunflower and tobacco. In fact, until recently, tobacco was the country’s main agricultural export, with about 95% of production on smallholder land.
“The government has recognised the need for crop diversification and is advocating for groundnuts, coffee, macadamia nuts, soybeans and sunflowers as suitable supplements to the smallholders’ maize-based diets and as an alternative to cash crops like tobacco and tea,” Zuza said.
He added that the macadamia nut crop was particularly appropriate. “It is nutrient-dense, requires minimal maintenance, and the nuts fetch high market prices. Moreover, the first harvest of the crop is in January and February, when the annual staple crops have yet to mature. This means macadamias are an essential resource for improved food security when other foodstuffs are in short supply and expensive,” he said.
Research shows that as a country experiencing significant warming from climate change – 0.9°C from 1961 to 2021– Malawian smallholders who already grow macadamia trees were better off in terms of resilience during the recent extreme tropical storms Ana (2015) and Idai (2019). “This is because the trees and field crops growing under the trees were not affected by the cyclones. Farmers were able to harvest some of their field crops, in addition to the macadamia nuts. On the other hand, non-macadamia smallholders lost half of all their crops,” Zuza said.
In both the Ethiopian and the Malawian studies, the researchers agreed that the development of macadamia orchards would not only contribute to food security and a healthier population but offered a unique opportunity to drive economic growth in deep rural regions.
The academics also agreed that their respective governments must act strategically to promote the expansion of the crop in areas where they were adapted. In other words, giving careful consideration to the current and projected suitable areas for production while allowing for environmental and socio-economic factors.
Critically, both studies say that integrating the production of macadamias offers vast potential to provide food security through resilience, particularly in Malawi, where the nuts can offer a highly nutritious alternative to the cereal-based diet of subsistence farmers in a country that is facing a 1.2 million metric ton food shortage in 2026.
Acknowledgements:
Macadamia integrifolia farming for sustainable development: Global experiences, opportunities and challenges for scaling up : Yitayal Addis Alemayehu, Bewketu Mamaru Mengiste, Gebrie Tsegaye Mersha, Adrian Sirage Ali, Eguale Tadesse Kifle (2025)
Macadamia Nuts as a Supplement to Cereal-Based Diets in Malawi : Emmanuel Junior Zuza, Abdulmumin Opeyemi Muhammed, Andrew Emmott, Rick L. Brandenburg and Yoseph N. Araya (2024)
A Hope Taking Root: Climate Resilience through Macadamia in Ethiopia : Integral May 23, 2025 Veronic Macsai, Integra’s Director of Programms.
While macadamia nut prices on the world’s markets are yet to return to pre-Covid highs, the industry continues to grow, particularly on the African continent where countries are looking to the crop for food security and much-need foreign currency.
In statistics compiled by industry expert and consultant Philip Lee, Malawi has tracked the highest growth in tree planting since the 1980s, with 5 000 trees planted that year, compared with 400 000 young trees going into the ground in 2019. However, new plantings have declined significantly post the pandemic, with 300 000 young trees planted in 2020, 250 000 in 2021 and 2022, 200 000 in 2023, and 100 000 in 2024. Last year commercial growers in the landlocked country planted just 50 000 trees. In 1990, Malawi produced 380 tons DIS with a predicted harvest in 2030 of 23 084 tons DIS.
Dr Emmanuel Junior Zuza from Britain’s Royal Agriculture University said while Malawi had exponentially expanded its orchards, most of the trees had yet to come into production. “You will find that Malawi is about the seventh or eighth largest producer of macadamia nuts in the world.”
While Ethiopia is yet to register the development of commercial orchards, orchards have been planted for research purposes, according to academic Yitayal Addis Alemayehu from the Kotebe University of Education’s Department of Environmental Management in Adis Ababa. He said the Ethiopian government was committed to advancing the crop as an alternative to coffee-growing by smallholder farmers in the southern regions, where production dropped by between 5% and 7% in 2025 due to the impact of climate change. This is despite a 9% increase in the country’s overall coffee production last year. Trees for the research programme were imported from Kenya where in 1980, 100 000 trees were planted, with the numbers of young trees being planted climbing to a high of 140 000 in 2016.
The bulk of Kenya’s macadamia crop is produced by about 200 000 smallholder farmers, with production increasing from about 23 960 tons DIS in 2010 to 46 500 tons DIS last year. The country is predicted to produce up to 51 000 tons DIS in 2030.
Notably, the Kenyan crop is produced with little to no pesticides or herbicides, which is a model that Ethiopia is hoping to emulate as demand for organically grown produce grows, particularly in Europe.
Interestingly, in 1990, Kenya was the leading producer of macadamias on the continent producing 3 040 tons DIS compared with South Africa’s
1 415 tons DIS.
Today South Africa is the largest producer in the world, with 114 738 tons DIS harvest expected this year compared with 47 000 tons DIS in Kenya. In 2030, South Africa is expected to produce 191 809 tons DIS compared with Kenya’s 51 470 tons DIS.
Countries like Rwanda have also started producing macadamias, with 50 000 young trees planted each year between 2016 and 2018. However, that figure has declined significantly to just 5 000 trees last year. In Mozambique, plantings also peaked during the same period with 130 000 trees going into the ground each year between 2018 and 2020. Rwanda is predicted to produce 23 000 tons DIS by 2030 and Mozambique 6 000 tons DIS.
s Dr Emmanuel Junior Zuza, a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Management and Sustainability at the Royal Agricultural University in the UK, says macadamia nuts offer a nutritious and vital supplement for Malawians.
