1. Summary

Animal Advocacy Africa (AAA) works to empower animal advocates who are interested in or are working to reduce farmed animal suffering in African countries. AAA shares knowledge, provides connections, and helps advocates build the skills to run an impactful animal advocacy organisation.

This year, we:

• Helped 17 partner organisations raise a total of ~US$85,000.[1] We discuss how much of this we think may have counterfactually happened without AAA’s support in Section 3.

• Provided strategic advice and feedback to 15 organisations, and influenced at least 2 of our partners to adopt high-impact interventions, with one adopting a high-impact intervention in preventing or slowing the growth of industrial animal agriculture in Uganda and one leading a cage-free campaign in Ghana.

• Helped connect at least 6 of our partners to influential figures and organisations in the global Effective Altruism (EA) and animal advocacy movements[2], with the aim of improving the visibility of the farmed animal advocacy movement in Africa.

• Released two research reports on farmed animal advocacy in the African and Asian contexts. 

Next year we intend to: 

• Continue our current capacity-building programme, with changes and improvements made based on feedback and monitoring & evaluation findings.

• Start regranting funds to especially promising African advocates and organisations to encourage effective programming and interventions that we think are most likely to help farmed animals in African countries.

• Identify evidence-based strategies and work with local advocates to mitigate the rise of intensive animal farming in Africa as much as possible.  

Our primary bottleneck, and that of our partner organisations, remains a lack of funding. Our total funding gap for 2023 is $290,000. We intend to mitigate this by:

• Better emphasising the importance, neglectedness and tractability of farmed animal advocacy work in Africa. This includes improving overall visibility of the movement in Africa by highlighting the work that organisations are doing to funders and the wider international movement, and facilitating networking and connections between African organisations and international advocates.

• Better demonstrating our added value to African groups and to the African movement more broadly. Consistently tracking our progress and showcasing monitoring & evaluation findings more clearly for potential donors. Relatedly, better highlighting our theory of change with key cruxes validated. 

• Hiring a full-time Fundraising & Communications staff.

• Increasing and improving outreach to high-net-worth individuals who may be interested in supporting farmed animal welfare in Africa.

• Registering in the United States to qualify for various matching opportunities offered during Giving Season. 

2. Why farmed animal advocacy in Africa?

We believe that farmed animal advocacy in Africa is a highly impactful project to work on for several reasons:  

• The human population of Africa is expected to nearly triple by 2100. Meat production in Africa has nearly doubled since 2000, and this rate is expected to increase to match the growing population and growing wealth of the continent. 

• Of all continents, Africa has the highest growth rate in aquatic farming.

• Farmed animal advocacy is incredibly neglected in Africa — in 2019, Open Philanthropy estimated that only $1 million went towards farmed animal advocacy work in Africa per year.[3]

• Building the farmed animal advocacy movement in Africa before intensive animal farming is locked-in may improve the lives of millions of animals in the near- and long-term future and potentially prevent millions of animals from being born in factory farming conditions.

3. What we achieved in 2022

3.1 Our programme

In our 2021 Yearly Review, we aimed to improve our capacity-building programme implementation by integrating feedback given by our partner organisations and working with more organisations.

In 2022, we expanded our programme from 8 organisations across 5 different countries in Africa to 17 organisations across 8 different countries. We supported them across areas such as fundraising, strategy, and operations and communications. Our outcomes are illustrated below.  

3.2 Research & wider outreach

In our 2021 Yearly Review, we aimed to produce two research reports in 2022 - research on impactful animal advocacy interventions, and scoping research on the internal challenges and bottlenecks faced by farmed animal welfare organisations in Asia. We accomplished this goal.

In May, our Research Intern, Joy Muthanje Mwaniki released a report on animal advocacy interventions that we think are likely to have the highest impact in African countries. We analysed different animal advocacy interventions targeting farm/production animals across five African countries representing each region of the African continent: Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa. This study attempted to determine the interventions that are likely to succeed in these countries to inform animal advocates about interventions that may be well suited to each country's context. Joy also shared her findings in a webinar with 24 external attendees and we discussed this in a group session with organisations in our programme to help them apply these findings in practice.  

In July, we released a scoping report to understand the internal challenges and bottlenecks faced by farmed animal welfare (FAW)/vegan organisations in Asia. The purpose of our research was to:

• Explore what capacity building actions/interventions are most needed to solve the challenges faced by organisations in the region, and 

• Assess whether our capacity building programme should and can be expanded to the region.  

We concluded that our current programme was not the best fit for solving the challenges of Asian animal advocacy organisations; however, we think our findings are still useful to other capacity builders, donors, and advocates who are interested in growing the FAW/vegan movement in Asia. 

This year, we also conducted wider outreach to develop a more unified animal advocacy movement in Africa. We attended 9 effective altruism and animal advocacy conferences where we gave presentations about the African animal advocacy landscape, highlighted the work that animal advocacy organisations are doing, found like-minded collaborators, and developed plans for increasing the capacity of animal advocates in 2023. 

In addition to Joy’s webinar highlighted above, we organised 2 additional webinars to share research on high-impact interventions with a total of 38 external attendees. We further developed our website to include an “Our Reach” page to briefly introduce our partners to a wider audience. We worked on improving our communications and social media outreach, growing our LinkedIn followers from 565 to nearly 1400. In addition, we continuously updated our publicly available databases on areas such as funding sources, mentorship and training, learning resources and research support.

4. Our 2023 Strategy

4.1 Capacity-building programme 

We intend to continue building the capacities of animal advocates and organisations that are working on-the-ground in Africa to reduce animal suffering. We have helped 17 organisations across 8 countries this year. Our programme remains focused on helping organisations build the critical components of effective, evidence-based charities and on empowering them to overcome challenges, prepare for growth, and do more work to help animals in relatively neglected geographic regions. But we will be making some changes to it based on internal staff feedback and external feedback from our partner organisations. 

Rather than increasing the number of partners we work with, this year we intend to prioritise the most promising and strategically-aligned organisations, that are specifically focusing on farmed animal welfare. We plan to focus on these high-priority organisations, providing personalised and core support to directly improve their strategy and output; while building a wider network of advocates through our general, public work to facilitate connections and develop a coherent regional effort. 

We also aim to host an Animal Advocacy Africa summit, bringing together all our partner organisations and other advocates to build relationships, learn from each other, and align on strategies for the farmed animal welfare movement in Africa. However, this remains lower priority for us and is contingent on meeting our funding gaps.

As a lack of capacity is a key bottleneck for animal advocacy organisations in Africa, we continue to believe that our capacity-building programme is a highly impactful way of building the animal movement in Africa. Our funding gap for this in 2023 is $155,000.

4.2 Regranting programme

Next, to address a lack of funding, we plan to regrant to highly promising African animal advocates and organisations. We intend for grants to cover both intervention/programmatic-related expenses and expenses to help them learn, network, and professionalise. 

We think regranting will have two important benefits: 

1. It will encourage effective programming and interventions that we think are most likely to help farmed animals in African countries. 

2. It will be a two-pronged approach to pair with our capacity-building programme. As we build an organisation’s capacity, this makes them more attractive to regrant to, further improving their capacity.

You can read more about our regranting plans here. Our funding gap for this regranting programme is $100,000

4.3 Identifying evidence-based strategies to mitigate the rise of factory farming in Africa as much as possible

We recognise that factory farming is in its infancy in Africa, but are concerned with growing signs of more intensive animal agriculture. We want to better understand the current status and growth of factory farming across the African continent, as well as what can be done by and for advocates to prevent or slow the growth of this expansion.

We aim to build an evidence-based overview of the extent of factory farming in certain areas of the continent, the levels of meat production/consumption and imports/exports, public attitudes towards meat and animal farming, and the regulations governing animal farming. We are also interested in identifying the key social, cultural, economic, and political drivers of factory farming, as well as the key public and private institutions involved in the development of factory farming.

Creating a coherent, effective, and adaptable strategy to maximise farmed animal welfare requires planning for various uncertain future outcomes. Since this project is preventative in nature, a strong focus will be placed on making evidence based predictions about possible, probable, and preferred futures in light of various legislative, social, and corporate barriers. By fully understanding the trajectory of factory farming across the continent, we should be better equipped to prevent harmful developments.

We aim to be intersectional and collaborative in our approach to preventing factory farming in Africa. By drawing on contacts already known to and engaged with AAA, we plan to co-create advocacy strategies with our partner organisations, which will inform our recommendations with cultural knowledge and increase buy-in for executing the strategies.  

Our funding gap for this project is $35,000.

5. Operational Updates

5.1 Budget and financial information

In 2022, AAA had a total annual budget of $143,616. Total expenses amounted to $100,300. ~83.5% of this was budgeted for our capacity-building program and research, covering areas like staff salaries and stipends given to our partner organisations. ~6.5% was allocated to operational expenses such as travel, office supplies and software subscriptions. Finally, we allocated ~10% as contingency in the event of emergencies.

Our funding this year primarily came from philanthropic funds - including the Effective Altruism (EA) Animal Welfare Fund and an Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) Movement Grant - and generous contributions from high net worth individuals such as Peter Singer. We also received an increasing amount of smaller donations from multiple individuals within the Effective Altruism and animal welfare/rights movements.

We are extremely grateful for the financial contributions made by individuals and organisations to Animal Advocacy Africa and to our partner organisations.

5.2 Our staff

Our staff are our most valuable resource. Our current team consists of Lynn Tan (Research Lead), Cameron King (Operations Lead), Jenna Hiscock (Communications Lead), Sopani Robert Neba (Programme Manager), Moritz Stumpe (Research Associate) and Sarmad Nasarullah (Part-Time Fundraiser).  

6. Our mistakes and key areas for improvement

6.1. Programming

6.2 Organisational development

7. Our bottlenecks and how you can help us

7.1 Help us meet our funding gap

The farmed animal advocacy movement in Africa remains bottlenecked by insufficient funding. It is important that we secure diverse sources of funding, beyond major grants. We want to create a sustainable and varied funding model for not just for ourselves, but also for our partner organisations in Africa. 

For 2023, we have a total funding gap of $290,000. It seems unlikely that we will be able to fill this gap solely with our existing sources of funding. If you believe in our mission to build the farmed animal movement in Africa, you can support us with a tax-deductible donation.

We are incredibly grateful to all our current donors and supporters. At this critical juncture in the neglected African animal advocacy space, every dollar donated goes a long way! Your contributions enable what we do - our impact is your impact.

7.2 Give us feedback 

We don’t have everything figured out and we are just one organisation tackling a highly complex problem in a vast and diverse area. If you see flaws in our thinking or planning, please reach out or comment below. We always want to do better. 

7.3 Connect with us

If you haven’t already, you can sign up to our newsletter or follow us on social media (LinkedIn and Facebook) to stay up to date about our progress and the wider farmed animal advocacy movement in Africa.

Our 2021 review is available on our website.
 

1. We remain very uncertain about this figure as it was only qualitatively speculated by our team. We have not formally evaluated this figure with quantitative estimates, discounts, or counterfactual calculations. However, the amounts given in this review should be a conservative estimate, as we are only counting successful applications that we know of and that we know we played a role in. There might well be more successful applications that our support has influenced.

2.  As with funding, we remain somewhat uncertain about this figure, as it is plausible that some of these interactions may have eventually happened without our intervention.

3. We are currently conducting research to update these numbers and provide more detailed information on the funding situation in Africa.