Animal Advocacy Africa

As the year draws to an end, we updated our map of programme participants and partner organisations. We hope this visual representation is useful for anyone interested in seeing our reach over the past 4 years! Click here to view map: https://lnkd.in/dXgaT2vw

We've just published our 2024 yearly review!🚀 This review reports outcomes from our 2023/24 training programme, including three new projects we incubated. We estimate that that our first cohort has added a value of ~$279,000 to the African farmed animal advocacy movement so far. Besides our training programme, we supported the planning of the first AVA Summit in Africa, assisted grantmakers and donors on ~$46,000 worth of grants, helped start an Effective Animal Advocacy Nigeria group and published three major research projects. 🌍In 2025, we plan to: -Complete our 2024/25 training programme to incubate new effective animal advocacy initiatives in Africa and enable participants to take on new roles to reduce farmed animal suffering. -Host our first in-person retreat with our program participants and partner organisations in Kenya after the AVA Africa Summit in July. -Improve our outreach to recruit more high-quality participants for our training programme and subsequently launch a third iteration of the programme for a new cohort of participants later in the year. -Hire additional staff (or external support). We’re always looking for partners to accelerate the growth of the farmed animal advocacy movement in Africa. With our plans now published for the next year, we are actively seeking donations to bridge our funding gap of ~$150,000 for 2025. Whether you can contribute a substantial sum or a small amount, every donation makes a difference. In 2025, your support can help us in the following ways: 💲$5,000 allows us to provide stipends to all our programme participants for a month  💲$10,000 covers our staff salaries for a month  💲$30,000 allows us to provide seed funding to an impactful project that is launched through our programme If you support our mission to build the farmed animal movement in Africa, you can make a tax-deductible donation. Read our full review: https://lnkd.in/dZUtgzHa

Our 2024 Fundamentals Training Programme has officially kicked off this week! 🎉 We're thrilled to welcome this year's cohort of 19 participants representing 7 African countries. Here's a glimpse of our first group meeting, during which we began getting to know each other and building an understanding of the programme. It was inspiring to meet everyone and begin this journey together!

🎇 We’ve wrapped up our outreach for our next training programme, and we are thrilled with the outcome! We received 406 applications, a 35% increase from last year's—well beyond our expectations. Thank you to all applicants for your interest in our programme. We’re also grateful to everyone who helped spread the word by sharing the open call with your networks and friends. We can't wait to meet the next cohort and introduce you to our participants!

The Animal & Vegan Advocacy (AVA) Summit is coming to Africa in 2025 🥳 Set to take place in July 2025 in Nairobi, this will be the first AVA Summit in the continent and we are so excited to be supporting it! The AVA Summit is an international conference series for advocates working towards one shared vision: removing animals from our food system and other human use! We encourage advocates to apply! Stay tuned for more details: https://lnkd.in/d5rXWEgu

🚨 New Report on Farmed Animal Welfare in Ghana 🚨 In their latest report, Animal Ask and Animal Welfare League discuss top interventions to protect farmed animals and promote humane, sustainable farming in Ghana: - Cage-free work for hens: Supporting farmers to move away from battery cages, as the global market shifts toward more humane systems. - Poultry disease prevention: Tackling zoonotic diseases that lead to the death and suffering of the chickens, existential human health concerns and financial losses for farmers. - Pre-slaughter stunning: Expanding the use of humane stunning methods to minimise stress and pain during slaughter, particularly for chickens (which is a project that our previous participant, Emmanuel Awuni is now working on) - Improving water quality on tilapia farms: Setting up programs to monitor and improve water quality on tilapia farms to improve health, welfare and productivity outcomes for farmed fish. - Strengthen biosecurity practices in aquaculture: Establishing a biosecurity plan for aquaculture in Ghana to reduce the risk for fish and fish farmers from disease outbreaks. Read the full report in their post below.

Introducing Aquatic Futures Africa by NJALIRA kassim rashid and Sylvia Nanfuka Kirumira! This initiative aims to help large-scale fish farmers in Uganda transition to more humane fish farming practices. By actively involving farmers in the decision-making process, the project aims to explore, create, and implement welfare standards tailored to the unique needs of fish. 🔍 Progress so far: - Engaged with 10+ stakeholders, including the National Fisheries Resource Research Institute, Makerere University, National Environmental Management Authority, National Agricultural Research Organisation, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries. - Pre-tested and validated fish welfare assessment tools to ensure they meet the required standards. - Conducted 3 stakeholder consultation meetings with 21 fish farmers to gauge their willingness to collaborate on improving fish welfare and better understand their perspectives. - Visited 20+ fish farms to assess farm conditions, observe fish behavior and welfare, and interview farmers. 🎯 Next steps: - Complete preliminary data analysis based on interviews and farm visits to decide on a pilot intervention to improve fish welfare. - Begin pilot intervention with 2 fish farms, including the National Fisheries Resource Research Institute, in November. Reach out to them directly for more info about their work!

We had an inspiring time at the Effective Altruism South Africa summit this past weekend! A huge congratulations to the organisers—especially Imaan Khadir, one of our training programme participants. It was a pleasure to give a presentation on effective animal advocacy and engage in productive conversations with other advocates. It was great to reconnect with familiar faces and meet new people in the growing movement, including Mbamu C. from Zambia, another participant from our programme, and Brett Thompson and Josiah Ojwang.

🌱 Reminder: Applications for our 2024 Fundamentals Training Programme is closing in 5 days! If you are interested in reducing farmed animal suffering in Africa, please consider applying!