Africa Network for Animal Welfare founder Josphat Ngonyo steps down

But Josphat Ngonyo remains active in multiple other organizations

NAIROBI,  Kenya––Josphat Ngonyo,  52,  long a leading figure in the transition of African animal advocacy from direction by expatriates and non-African funders to stand-alone independence,  on November 1,  2024 retired after 18 years heading the Africa Network for Animal Welfare [ANAW].

“The time has come for me to step down from ANAW,”  Ngonyo emailed to ANIMALS 24-7,   “which is a fulfillment of my founding desire.  I will therefore be taking a leave break before settling on what to do next.”

Africa Animal Welfare Conference

Ngonyo remains actively involved in organizing the now annual Africa Animal Welfare Conference series,  which he initiated in 2009,  three years after incorporating ANAW on April 3,  2006.  Thirty-four of the 54 recognized African nations now have participating member organizations.

“It is tough to believe that Jos will be stepping down from the executive role at ANAW,”  offered Thomas W. Kahema,  executive director of the Tanzania Animal Welfare Society in Dar es Salaam,  the capital city of Tanzania.

Thomas Kahema testifies

“I first met Jos in Las Vegas in the United States 15 years ago,”  Kahema recalled,  where both attended the Humane Society of the U.S. Animal Care Expo as HSUS guests.  “We held a great conversation about the animal welfare situation in Africa.  He told me he was preparing a conference in Nairobi on ‘Animal Alternatives in Learning & Experiments,’  and he invited me.  I managed to attend this first  conference in September, 2009 at the Kenya Institute of Education.  It was an amazing experience.”

The Africa Animal Welfare Conferences are now co-hosted by the United Nations Environment Program,  the African Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources,  and the governments of the nations in which each conference edition is held.

Formed ANAW to promote humane values & recognition of animal sentience

Ngonyo formed ANAW,  he told ANIMALS 24-7 in 2006,  motivated by observing that humane values were insufficiently recognized––if at all––by most of the many animal charities already working in Africa,  many of them solely focused on wildlife conservation.

In particular,  Ngonyo hoped to promote formal recognition of animal sentience among African governments,  based on traditional African teachings.

Ngonyo appreciated the work on behalf of dogs,  cats,  working animals,  and livestock done by then-expatriate-founded-and-led institutions such as the Kenya SPCA,  but wanted to encourage and assist the inevitable transfer of leadership to indigenous Africans.

Ngonyo also wanted to share with the world beyond Africa what Kenya and fellow Africans can teach about living without animal exploitation.

“Letting go & letting God”

Toward that end,  Ngonyo in “retirement” still serves in advisory capacities with many other organizations,  including,  besides the Africa Animal Welfare Conference series, Compassion In World Farming,  Lifewatch,  the Kenya Wildlife Service,  and the Gateway to Farm Animals project of the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization.

His November 1,  2024 retirement from the Africa Network for Animal Welfare [ANAW] is actually his second attempt to do so.

Recalled ANAW communications manager Sebastian Mwanza,  “With transition in his mind,  in 2016,  during ANAW’s 10th anniversary,  Josphat,  believing in letting go and letting God,  made a public announcement of stepping down in three years.

“Rocked the boat”

“That decision,  however,  rocked the boat as no one seemed prepared for the change then.  He thus changed strategy and set on a journey to prepare a solid leadership team that could lead ANAW in his absence.

“Marking the 18th anniversary earlier this year, he did acknowledge that ANAW had now come of age and could walk steadily and even achieve more without him on the steering wheel.”

The ANAW board of directors,  Mwanza said,  “has appointed Josiah Ojwang,  director of programs,  to act as executive director,  until a permanent executive director is recruited.”

“My uncle & father figure”

Orphaned at age 10,  Josphat Ngonyo was adopted,  he told ANIMALS 24-7 in 2021,  by “my uncle and father figure Mwachofi Ngonyo,”  who “was among the last of the Watha people who lived in Tsavo East National Park,”  in southeastern Kenya,  “before it was gazetted [made a national park] in 1948.”

Many of the Watha continued to hunt in the new national park as they always had.  This made them poachers in the eyes of the law,  but Mwachofi Ngonyo joined the first Tsavo National Park warden David Sheldrick,  his teenaged wife Daphne Jenkins Sheldrick,  and ranger Bill Woodley in protecting the Tsavo wildlife.

“Ranger-driver”

Employed “as a ranger driver in Tsavo East National Park,”  Josphat Ngonyo wrote,  Mwachofi Ngonyo “risked his life in combat with ‘shiftas,’”  as poachers and bandits are known in East Africa,  from Ethiopia and South Sudan to Tanzania.

Josphat Ngonyo recalled Mwachofi Ngonyo as “a God fearing man who selflessly opened his home and took me in when I needed the most to rejoin school and study,  which became the most significant stepping stone for my entire life.

“Better still,”   Josphat Ngonyo continued,  “he inspired me into my animal welfare and conservation career.”

(See Passed on: a Kenyan hero, others who served, & a questionable Canadian.)

Rosalie Osborn

Sent to the Starehe Boys’ Center & School in Nairobi,  Josphat Ngonyo was noticed by “Naomi Taluh,  my loving and inspiring primary school headmistress,  who was a close friend to Rosalie Osborn,  and through whom I met Rosalie Osborn.

“Rosalie inspired me into environmental conservation and animal welfare through exposure,”  Josphat Ngonyo explained,  “such as visits to wildlife sanctuaries,  participation in conservation forums and meeting, camping expeditions,  and relevant readings.

“This fanned my love for nature and nurtured my knowledge and skills.  She always kept companion animals,  but never kept a grudge,  and never left anything to chance.  She took time to consult and seek a second and third opinion and often times fourth and fifth,   and so on until she was completely satisfied that she had it right.

“This is evidenced by the time she took in consultations over her Trust Deed for the Riverine Nature Reserve Trust that she created.”

The Riverine Nature Reserve Trust preserves the wildlife habitat around Osborn’s home,  Kifaru House,  under management of the Africa Network for Animal Welfare.

(See Rosalie Osborn, mentor to Africa Network for Animals founder Josphat Ngonyo.)

Early years

Funding his further education by selling clothing from a motorcycle,  riding from Nairobi to remote villages where there were no clothing stores to find customers,  Josphat Ngonyo attended Moi University in Nairobi from 1992 to 1996,  earning a degree in social sciences and communication and participating in the Moi University Wildlife Club.

Later in 1996 Josphat Ngonyo left a brief career teaching school to do humane education and administrative work for the David Sheldrick Trust, an elephant and rhino rescue and rehabilitation charity founded by Daphne Sheldrick after David Sheldrick died in 1995.

Josphat Ngonyo and his Moi University Wildlife Club friend Steve Itela in 1998 cofounded Youth for Conservation from donated office space at the Sheldrick wildlife orphanage adjacent to Nairobi National Park,  near the Kenya Wildlife Service headquarters and wildlife rehabilitation center,  and the Kenya SPCA.

Youth for Conservation

Youth for Conservation initially focused on organizing student volunteers to do snare removal sweeps in the Kenyan national parks.

“Josphat Ngonyo was among our most valuable employees from 1996 to 2000,”  Daphne Sheldrick told ANIMALS 24-7,  counting having hosted the debut of Youth for Conservation as one of the David Sheldrick Trust’s most meaningful accomplishments.

Daphne Sheldrick was not alone in that opinion.  Wildlife veterinarian Bill Jordan,  founder of Care for the Wild,  his son Chris Jordan,  who formerly managed Care for the Wild operations in Kenya,  and ivory trade investigator Esmond Martin all told ANIMALS 24-7 that the rise of Youth for Conservation was a major turning point in encouraging indigenous Kenyans to take the initiative to protect wildlife.

(See Who killed ivory trade investigator Esmond Martin, why?)

Daphne Sheldrick

Josphat Ngonyo and Steve Itela returned Daphne Sheldrick’s compliments.

“If there is anyone I ever knew who was unreservedly and single-mindedly committed to the animal cause,  with a big heart full of love for animals and people, who was selfless,  with a magnetic personality,  that one person was Daphne,  who inspired my conservation and animal welfare interests,”  Josphat Ngonyo said.

Agreed Itela,  “Daphne had a warm heart and was our mentor.  Her contribution and efforts to wildlife conservation were comparable to none.  She inspired me and we had wonderful conversations whenever an opportunity presented itself.”

(See Daphne Sheldrick, 83, showed Kenya that wildlife is worth most when alive.)

Education is key to stopping poaching

Despite the Youth for Conservation snare removal efforts,  continued by ANAW,  Josphat Ngonyo lamented in 2019,  “Poaching for bushmeat in particular is on the increase!

“My experience while living in wildlife areas,  enriched by market surveys,  indicate that the solution does not lie in sending community members to jail.  Poachers do it due to poverty and lack of alternative livelihoods.”

            “Vocational training and formal education,  leading to gainful employment,  will economically empower communities with alternatives,”  Josphat Ngonyo explained.

“$3,000 U.S. will see an individual go through four years of formal education or two individuals go through vocational training for two years each,”  Josphat Ngonyo said.

“North American Wildlife Management Model” does not work in Africa

Thus the sum granted by the U.S., government to the World Wildlife Fund alone for paramilitary anti-poaching operations over the preceding 20 years could have educated between 42,000 and 84,000 impoverished African villagers.

This could potentially protect far more wildlife than have demonstrably been protected by non-governmental paramilitary operations in at least 12 African nations which are,  for the most part,  conspicuous for failing to save endangered animals.

Ngonyo is particularly critical,  from direct experience,  not only of the typical western-funded-and-directed anti-poaching approach,  but also of the entire so-called North American Wildlife Management Model,  which relies upon hunting license revenues to fund conservation.

“Cropping”

Recounted Ramadhan Rajab of the Nairobi Star in January 2022,  “Sport hunting was introduced to Kenya in 1910,  but following drastic losses of some hunted species,”  despite so-called conservation management,  [first Kenyan president] Jomo Kenyatta in 1977 put a total ban on the practice.

“Richard Leakey,  during his tenure as Kenya Wildlife Service director in the 1990s,  reintroduced an experimental cropping program,”  meaning that raising wildlife to be shot for trophies was allowed.

“It was supposed to run for five years,”  Rajab wrote,  “but it went on for 13 years.  In 2001,  a cropping evaluation report was done that established that poaching for bushmeat increased around areas in which cropping was allowed.  This led to a total ban of consumptive utilization of wildlife by the then [wildlife and tourism] minister,  the late Newton Kulundu,  in 2004.”

Fought the Laikipia Wildlife Forum

But the ban imposed by Kulundu held only briefly.  The Laikipia Wildlife Forum,  an association of landowners mostly of European descent,  backed by pro-hunting U.S. organizations including the African Wildlife Foundation,  Safari Club International,  and USAid,  an arm of the U.S. State Department,  reportedly lent behind-the-scenes impetus to a December 2004 stealth repeal by the Kenyan legislature of Jomo Kenyatta’s 1977 ban on sport hunting,  led by G.G. Kariuki,  elected representative from Laikipia West.

Youth for Conservation rallied opposition,  including from semi-nomadic pastoralists who recognized the existence of hunting ranches as threat to the open-range grazing they have practiced for millennia.

“Sport hunting and cropping wildlife contradicts tourism principles,”  Josphat Ngonyo explained to Rajob.  “You cannot shoot down animals today and expect to view and photograph their next of kin the following day.”

Sidney Quntai

With a working budget of next to nothing,  but assisted by prominent Kenyan television journalist Sidney Quntai,  Ngonyo and others mobilized sufficient public outrage,  nationwide,  that Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki––a member of the same political party as Kariuki––vetoed the Kariuki bill on December 31,  2004,  one day before it would have taken effect.

“If we accept this idea of consumption,”  Josphat Ngonyo said,  “we are pacing down the road that was taken by some West African nations,”  whose only consolation now “are drawings and stories of the wildlife they used to have.

“Nigeria,  Ghana,  Cote d’Ivore, Cameroon and Liberia are among African counties that adopted consumptive utilization,”  Josphat Ngonyo recalled.  “Today,  they hardly have wildlife.”

(See The myth of sport hunting as a solution to conservation.)

            Sidney Quntai went on to organize the Kenya Coalition for Wildlife Conservation & Management.

Stopped zoo animal export scheme

Quntai and Josphat Ngonyo continued to work together to stop a scheme first floated in mid-2005 which would have sold more than 300 animals collected from Kenyan national parks to the Chiang Mai Safari Zoo in Thailand.

A combination of lawsuits,  political activism,  and exposés of corruption involved in the deal caused it to be scaled back to involve just 104 animals,  and then be cancelled altogether after a 2006 coup d’etat in Thailand.

(See “Kenya’s wildlife should remain in the wild” –– Sidney Quntai, 57.)

            Apart from continuing the work of Youth for Conservation,  and launching the Africa Animal Welfare Conference series,  ANAW has probably been most successful in promoting humane education.

(See Desnaring in Kenya with ANAW and China House,  and Zebra rescuers earn their stripes.)

National humane education curriculum

“For the first time in Kenya, animal welfare will be integrated into the national school curriculum,” Josphat Ngonyo exulted to ANIMALS 24-7 by email,  after signing a memorandum of understanding with the Kenya Institute for Curriculum Development on June 6, 2014 that “sets the structure for this process to begin.” Ngonyo said.

Kenya moved toward adopting a national humane curriculum eleven years after South Africa introduced a humane curriculum at urging of first post-apartheid South African president Nelson Mandela––but Kenya,  at that,  is well ahead of most of the rest of the world,  including the U.S.,  where mandates for humane education that were legislatively adopted in nine states early in the 20th century have yet to be funded and implemented.

ANAW has also promoted humane and environmental education for judges through a program called the National Judicial Dialogues, “that engages 16 law enforcement agencies in the fight for justice and conservation,”  Sebastian Mwanza said.

(See Kenya adds humane education curriculum and World Animal Day in Nairobi, Kenya.)

Pastoralists vs. national parks

ANAW under Josphat Ngonyo has also worked to resolve conflicts between pastoralists and Kenyan national park management.

In 2015,  for instance,  amid severe drought,  “At least 400,000 head of cattle have invaded the Tsavo West National Park,  depriving wildlife of pasture and water,”  reported Mathias Ringa of The Daily Nation then.

In truth the number of cattle in Tsavo West was closer to 47,000,  Africa Animal Welfare Network Josphat Ngonyo told ANIMALS 24-7,  after a week of making inquiries.  Another 20,000 cattle were illegally in Tsavo East National Park.

That,  however,  was steeply increased from the numbers of cattle involved in previous reported incursions into Tsavo during drought years.

The cumulative impact of the cattle might have been greater than that of the estimated 11,000 elephants in the Tsavo region.

Seeking long term solutions

“Government usually takes the position of law and order,”  meaning a tendency to favor landowners,  Josphat Ngonyo told ANIMALS 24-7,   “while politicians take a more sympathetic view [toward nomadic pastoralists], which is understandable as they hunt for votes.  Nonetheless, both of these positions just address the symptoms and not the real issue, which requires engagement with the affected communities to seek long term solutions.”

In the long run,  Josphat Ngonyo has increasingly recognized,  Kenya must transition away from reliance on animal agriculture toward a more plant-based diet,  along with the rest of the world,  or be devastated by global warming.

Located as Kenya is on the equator,  and already largely dry forest and desert,  Kenya is already feeling the impact of global warming much more intensely than most nations.

This,  one might guess,  will be Josphat Ngonyo’s next focal concern.

(See Kenya crisis shows need to transition out of animal agriculture.)

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