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.
Year Reviews
Case Studies
Daniel is the founder of Animal Welfare League (AWL), an animal advocacy organisation based in Ghana. They joined our capacity-building programme in 2022.
Daniel Abiliba from Animal Welfare League
In 2022, we influenced their decision to pursue cage-free advocacy in Ghana, facilitated their introduction to the Open Wing Alliance, and helped them secure their first grant of USD 20,000 from the EA Animal Welfare Fund
By 2023, our assistance enabled AWL to obtain an additional USD 97,500 in grants from the EA Animal Welfare Fund, the Open Wing Alliance, and the Tiny Beam Fund. Moreover, we established a partnership with Ribon, generating approximately USD 1,000 monthly for the organisation
Beyond fundraising, our support extended to various other areas: facilitating their participation as speakers at the AVA Summit in both 2022 and 2023, connecting them with volunteers who developed their website, and guiding them in using Mailchimp for newsletter campaigns
“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.”
Dr Paul Ssuna from Animal Welfare Competence Center for Africa
Yvonne Gurira from Animal Advocates International
Paul is the founder of Animal Welfare Competence Center for Africa (AWeCCA), an animal advocacy organisation based in Uganda. They joined our programme in 2022.
“AAA introduced us to the Weighted Factor Model which has helped us ensure we select interventions that can achieve the most possible impact”
In 2022, we provided strategic advice and facilitated connections to research services offered by Animal Ask. Their research, combined with our feedback, influenced Paul to adopt a high-impact intervention – a decision we believe might not have occurred without our involvement.
We supported AWeCCA in securing a USD 75,000 grant from the EA Animal Welfare Fund.
In 2023, they formed a task force committee which has appraised the current policy and legislative framework in Uganda, progressing toward recommendations for revised policies. They also met with several stakeholders to advocate for updating and reforming the current Animal Cruelty Prevention Act of 1976.
AWeCCA presented insights on chicken caged farming in Uganda at a conference in Ghana and visited Ethiopian stakeholders in the animal agriculture industry to discuss how development cooperation NGOs can leverage guidelines for animal welfare in their initiatives.
Yvonne is the founder of Animal Advocates International (AAI), an animal advocacy organisation based in Zimbabwe. They 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
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).