Our Progress
Top Achievements
Page last updated: February 2024
We work to reduce and prevent the suffering of farmed animals by focusing on building the animal advocacy movement in Africa at a critical time: before animal farming practices become more intensive. We empower advocates who are interested in working on this issue by sharing knowledge, providing connections, and helping them build the skills to lead or work at impactful animal advocacy organisations.
Case Studies
Daniel is the founder of Animal Welfare League (AWL), an animal advocacy organisation based in Ghana. AWL joined our capacity-building programme in 2022.
Daniel Abiliba from Animal Welfare League
Since then, AWL:
Secured a $20,000 grant from the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund after we recommended this funding opportunity
Received a $1,000 grant from the Catholic Concern for Animals, with us acting as a character reference
Presented at the Animal & Vegan Advocacy (AVA) Summit after we directly suggested them as a speaker
Joined various alliances, including the Open Wing Alliance (OWA) and Aquatic Animal Alliance; we introduced them to OWA, and Aquatic Animal Alliance
Implemented cage-free corporate campaigning after receiving strategic feedback from us
“One of the impacts that AAA’s programme has had for us is with networking and collaboration. It allows you to learn from other advocates and also possibly collaborate with them. AAA has helped us with organizational structure and focus; fundraising; strategy development.”
Yvonne Gurira from Animal Advocates International
Yvonne is the founder of Animal Advocates International (AAI), an animal advocacy organisation based in Zimbabwe. AAI joined our programme in 2022
“AAA has helped me to develop a strategic plan and funding proposals. AAA has recommended me to individual donors who have supported my organization not only with funding but with effective strategy and good operations practice ideas. AAA connected me with like-minded organizations in Zimbabwe and Africa, it also provided me with templates and advice on best practices for running an effective non-profit organization. AAA’s program is very helpful.”
Since then, AAI:
Has continued campaigning against the usage of battery cages by speaking on radio, lobbying farmers, and conducting training workshops
Attended Effective Altruism Global (EAG) San Francisco and the Animal & Vegan (AVA) Summit
Received a $1,000 donation from an EA-aligned donor after our recommendation
Received $4,000 from an EA network of funders with our recommendation
Research & Wider Outreach
We have released 5 research reports on animal advocacy.
In May 2021, we released three research reports offering insight into the animal advocacy landscape in Africa.
In our first report, we highlight interventions being implemented by animal advocacy organisations in Africa and bottlenecks preventing their work. We identified the two main bottlenecks faced by organisations to be insufficient capacity and funding. We consequently channelled our efforts towards mitigating these challenges.
In our second report, we conducted research into the funding landscape of the African movement through conversations with prominent funders about barriers to funding animal advocacy in Africa. We identified that funders had an interest in funding farmed animal advocacy in Africa, but remained hesitant due to various knowledge gaps. Subsequent research is therefore geared towards filling these gaps.
Our Prioritisation Report evaluated different animal populations that African animal advocacy groups can focus on, aiming to decide which of these AAA should prioritise given scarce resources. We compared farmed, wild, companion and working animals on 9 criteria, including scale, cost-effectiveness, and neglectedness. We concluded that AAA could make the greatest impact through a primary focus on farmed animals.
The next year, in May 2022, 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 June 2022, 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.
Furthermore, we have curated and consistently updated eight capacity building databases for organisations and other stakeholders, covering areas such as funding sources, mentorship and training, learning resources and research support.
We have 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.
We released three blog posts but no detailed research reports. In 2024, we aim to publish the results from two research projects. We sent quarterly newsletters to a relatively stable number of 200-300 recipients. Our work received more mentions in various places in 2023 compared to 2022 (such as the Impactful Animal Advocacy newsletter, in blog posts by organisations like ACE and Faunalytics, and on podcasts like How I Learned to Love Shrimp).
Limitations
As a meta organisation supporting other organisations, measuring our true impact is complex. We remain uncertain to what extent the achievements in this page are attributable to AAA. We have not formally evaluated our impact with rigorous quantitative estimates, discounts, or counterfactual calculations, nor have we adopted more formal methodologies such as randomised controlled trials or quasi-experimental designs. Instead, we make qualitative assessments on whether, for example, an organisation was previously aware of a funder or whether the connection was made directly through AAA.
We are mostly in early phases of monitoring and process evaluation, and have not acquired the appropriate level of resources (funding, specialised/expert support) for measuring true impact - but we aim to do so in the next 3-5 years.
Currently, we measure our progress by monitoring our activities and doing process evaluation. We track all of the cases in which we provide direct support to organisations in a central database. Monitoring the outcomes of these support cases forms the basis of estimating our impact on organisations. Constant communication with our partners helps us keep track of how different services are perceived and ultimately informs our strategy in terms of what kind of support we should provide.
We similarly measure other services which provide value to the wider animal advocacy community. These public-facing activities such as hosting webinars, publishing research, and speaking at conferences are designed to increase the visibility of the farmed animal advocacy movement in Africa. The impact of these activities is even harder to measure. However, we track these activities and collect relevant key data points that can help us evaluate whether these activities are worthwhile (e.g., webinar attendance, publicity/recognition of research publications, or key takeaways from conferences).