Introduction: The Big Puzzle:
Ask different funders whether they are aware that Africa is one of the most critical frontiers for animal welfare. The majority will probably say yes. Proceed to ask whether they would like to intervene. A number will also likely agree. Lastly, if Africa remains chronically underfunded relative to its scale and trajectory. The answer, again, is yes. So, then, why isn't more money moving into the continent?
This is the question I have been sitting with, and it's the question I heard reflected to me recently in a conversation with a funder in the movement. The awareness exists. The motivation to intervene exists to a certain extent. The funding also exists. And yet in Africa, only 1-2% of global animal welfare funding was spent, despite being home to close to 5 billion farmed land animals today; a number projected to surpass every world region except Asia by 2050.
The gap between willing funders and underfunded work in Africa is not due to an awareness problem. It's systemic. It's a problem we need to name clearly to address it.
The Self-Defeating Cycle:
When asked why they are not funding more work in Africa, the answer that arises most often is the thin grantee pipeline on the continent. There simply aren't enough organizations at this stage that meet the typical funding criteria. Or they do not know whom to fund in the region. Or they are not confident about the work to be done.
While this is true, it is a half-truth, and the less important half. The more important truth, I believe, is this: the pipeline is thin because the investments that build pipelines that lead to actual change have not happened yet.
Consider how the animal welfare movement developed in Europe or North America, for instance. These regions did not produce funding-ready organizations instantly. They were built intentionally through years (decades, actually) of ‘risky’ seed funding, advocate training, capacity building, and sustained investment in the infrastructure of the advocates and the movement. The funders didn't wait for maturity. They funded the conditions and the actual pipeline that created maturity.
The truth is that Africa has not received that foundational layer of investment. And yet we are applying the frameworks built for mature ecosystems to an early-stage one and then concluding that the pipeline is thin. The pipeline is not thin because Africa lacks potential. It's thin because the sequencing of investment has not been right. We are expecting a harvest before the seeds have been planted. We have also not prepared the ground.
Addressing Arising Concerns:
At this point, any reasonable funder may wonder: Are you asking us to fund organizations based on idealism alone, without stable ground?
That is not what I am saying.
The stable ground exists in Africa; it just looks a bit different from what conventional frameworks have been built to see and assess. For example, it looks like funding and investing in teams with deep contextual knowledge and demonstrated commitment, people doing serious work with almost no resources and still showing up. It looks like early wins that are relatively significant given the context and what was invested. A big win may be small by European standards, but it is a big win in Africa. It looks like theories of change that are grounded in local reality rather than imported word for word from Western models.
This is not idealism. It is a different but legitimate evidence base. This does not mean lowering standards; it is to build frameworks sophisticated enough to identify genuine potential in organizations that haven't yet had the resources to fully realize it.
Attuned funders in this movement already understand this. I checked and have seen examples of funders that have historically taken exactly this kind of risk: funding early-stage organizations operating under significant uncertainty before track records were established and before pipelines were mature. Many of the movement's most impactful interventions today were funded when they were just promising ideas with committed people behind them.
I am not asking funders to do something out of the norm. I am asking them to apply the same courage to Africa.
But Why Africa? Why Now?
Perhaps the sharpest question a funder can ask is the simplest one: why should I prioritize Africa over other urgent causes competing for my attention and funding?
My answer to this is that it is mathematical.
As I highlighted in my first piece, Africa is becoming one of the largest sites of farmed animal production. The food system infrastructure being built right now, the supply chains, the corporate behavior, the consumer habits, and the regulatory frameworks will be much harder to influence in the future compared to today. Therefore, every year of delay is not neutral. It is compounding. While we are delaying, billions are being invested in animal agriculture already on the continent, as I also indicated in my second piece.
The funders who move now are shaping the influence over a system still being formed. The funders who wait will pay a much higher price to change a system already entrenched. Early investment in Africa is not charity. It is strategic positioning in the highest-growth, most consequential animal welfare challenge of the next fifty years.
A Case Study of What Worked: The Donkey Welfare Movement
Growing up in Kenya, I remember “Mtunze Punda Daima," translated as “Treat Donkeys Well." This was not just a campaign, but it was almost an anthem across the country; this was the work of a growing and sustained movement of donkey welfare organizations working through community advocacy work, education, policy engagement with the government and with other policy actors, and veterinary care. It almost felt slow and invisible at the time, as thousands of donkeys continued to suffer cruelty and abuse.
Yet in February 2024, following years of sustained work and momentum, during the 37th African Union Summit in Ethiopia, the ban on the donkey skin trade was effected across the continent; sparing 33 million donkeys from being killed and maimed for their skin.
This success did not arrive immediately. Just in the previous decade, the donkey population in Africa was decimated by the demand for the Ejiao industry; which demanded close to 5.9 million donkey skins annually. In fact, experts had warned that the donkeys could soon join other endangered species if this trade continued to persist.
However, what changed the trajectory was not a single instantaneous intervention or funder; it was the coordinated effort of sustained interventions by organizations like Brooke, The Donkey Sanctuary, AU-IBAR, ANAW, and countless local advocacy organizations, all of which were working hard towards achieving what would have been impossible to achieve alone. It took a lot of conviction, persistence, and funding to sustain the work long before it mattered, and the results were evident.
This journey was long. In 2022, the Dar es Salaam Declaration was signed, and this was one of the pillars that kickstarted the African Union discussions to ban the trade. This was one of the foundations that led to the ban in 2024. It took years.
Today, there is better treatment and awareness about donkey welfare. Donkey brutality still exists, but you can notice the shift. People are aware. People know how to care for their donkeys. This did not come from one major shift; it came out of years of sustained effort and momentum through community work, grassroots education, and policy advocacy long before anyone could see the results.
This is what I mean by actual sustained investment in Africa’s animal welfare ecosystem.
So What Should Funders Actually Do?
The barriers are real, but not impossible to address nonetheless. A strategic investment in Africa's animal welfare ecosystem looks like the following:
- Funding the conditions for the entire ecosystem development, not just the ecosystem itself. This could be in the form of capacity-building grants, ensuring that grants cover operational support, leadership development, and advocacy training programs. While they may not produce immediate, measurable animal impact, they are integral in building the infrastructure that makes impactful program grants and projects possible. The Africa Food Ecosystem Series, a training program I co-founded currently, is working with over 60 advocates across Africa and is an example of exactly this kind of capacity building, currently running on donated time without funding.
- Applying contextually relevant assessment frameworks is important. Copy-pasting what works in Europe directly into Africa without incorporating local context and realities is not the pathway to change. For example, this could mean appreciating that an organization securing two corporate commitments on a $20,000 budget may be demonstrating more relative impact than one securing twenty on a $500,000 budget.
- Extending our time horizons for Africa. Compared to regions like Europe, the animal welfare movement in Africa is relatively young. The donkey welfare movement took years of sustained effort. Expecting annual grant cycles to produce mature outcomes in an early-stage ecosystem is a mismatch of timeframes. Three-to five-year commitments, or even more, change what's possible.
- Leveraging local experts. I believe funders cannot effectively evaluate African organizations well from a distance without experts who have ground-level and actual lived experiences in the ecosystem. They understand and know the organizations, the advocates, the lived realities, and the nuances, and can assess potential effectively. Investing in this is itself a high-leverage use of funding.
- Taking a risk and taking the first step. Even modest, exploratory investment in one or two promising African organizations builds the knowledge base that makes future investment more confident and more effective.
My Case as I Conclude:
The animal welfare movement's greatest funders did not build the movement by funding certainty. They built it by taking a risk, funding potential early, before the track record existed, before the pipeline was mature, and before the outcomes were guaranteed.
I believe Africa is that potential right now. And it deserves the bold, courageous risk-taking that other regions have enjoyed. The question for funders is no longer why Africa. The evidence on that is clear. Then what are we waiting for?
As always, you can reach me at [email protected].
