In 2025, Utunzi Africa implemented a set of animal welfare interventions across multiple counties in Kenya, focused on improving the lives of farmed and working animals while strengthening the resilience of the communities that depend on them. Our work spanned cage-free poultry advocacy, emergency response for working animals in drought and disaster settings, and preventive veterinary public health initiatives .
A major pillar of our work was cage-free chicken welfare advocacy. Through university and college outreach, farmer trainings, and corporate engagement, we promoted humane, cage-free egg production systems and ethical consumer awareness. In 2025, we trained students across five institutions and secured seven cage-free commitments from hotels and farms, contributing to the sparing of thousands of hens in Kenya from battery cages while equipping farmers and corporate teams with practical welfare and husbandry skills .
We also launched a Donkey and Camel Welfare & Resilience Project in drought-affected Turkana County, supporting working animals that are critical to pastoralist livelihoods. Interventions included emergency feed distribution, repair of water points, and construction of new water troughs. Over the course of the year, we reached nearly 25,000 working animals, enabled access to clean water for over 21,000 animals, and supported more than 1,200 households, surpassing our original targets.
In parallel, Utunzi Africa conducted rapid response animal welfare interventions following landslides in Elgeyo Marakwet County and partnered with county governments on rabies prevention and dog vaccination campaigns, contributing to Kenya’s national goal of eliminating dog-mediated human rabies by 2030. These efforts reflect our broader approach: integrating animal welfare, public health, and livelihood protection in contexts where animals play a central economic and social role .
As we look ahead, we remain focused on scaling cage-free advocacy, expanding working-animal welfare programs, improving disaster preparedness, and deepening partnerships with local institutions. For a detailed overview of our activities, outputs, and reflections from 2025, please see our full annual newsletter here: https://www.utunziafrica.org/media-center/publications/
