5 minute learn
This month, we spoke with Emmanuel Awuni, Director at SHARED (Sustainable Well being And Resilient Environments for Improvement), a non-profit devoted to fostering a sustainable future by way of the One Well being strategy. SHARED acknowledges the interconnectedness of animal, human, and environmental well being and work to ascertain evidence-based insurance policies that promote wellbeing.
Emmanuel is a physiotherapy skilled with practically half a decade of scientific expertise. Discovering efficient altruism led him to pursue a high- influence path past healthcare. On this interview, Emmanuel discusses SHARED’s position in integrating farmed animal welfare into public well being and environmental coverage, and their current work shaping aquaculture laws in Ghana.
Are you able to share an summary of what SHARED does?
SHARED is a Ghana-based group targeted on farmed animal coverage throughout Africa. We use a One Well being strategy, recognizing that animal well being, human well being, and environmental well being are deeply interconnected, to advocate for evidence-based interventions that profit farmed animals whereas concurrently advancing public well being and environmental outcomes.
Our mission is to cut back animal struggling, enhance human well being, and shield the setting by way of collaborative, holistic options. Our imaginative and prescient is a future the place the wellbeing of animals, people, and ecosystems throughout Africa is mutually reinforcing, resulting in thriving communities and flourishing environments.
How does SHARED establish interventions that may concurrently enhance animal welfare, public well being, and environmental resilience?
Animal welfare as a standalone subject hardly ever rises to the highest of presidency agendas in Africa. So relatively than advocate for it in isolation, we establish interventions the place animal welfare intersects meaningfully with public well being or environmental priorities, areas governments are already motivated to behave on. By analysis, we discover these overlapping areas and construct the proof base wanted to make our case. This strategy permits us to drive actual, policy-level change for farmed animals whereas working throughout the priorities and methods that really form selections on the bottom.
What have been the important thing findings out of your current report on aquaculture and fish welfare in Ghana?
We collaborated with Naveeth of AWASH to supply an evidence-based evaluation of fish welfare in Ghana’s aquaculture sector, named Aquaculture and Fish Welfare in Ghana. Key findings embody:
Scale and focus. Ghana’s farmed fish manufacturing grew from 7,500 MT in 2009 to 100,000 MT in 2023, a rise of roughly 250 million fish per 12 months. About 90% of manufacturing is Nile tilapia cage-farmed on Lake Volta, with roughly 101 producers accounting for 90% of output.
No authorized protections exist. There aren’t any enforceable requirements for stocking density, water high quality, dealing with, transport, or slaughter. Fish welfare relies upon solely on particular person farmer discretion.
Illness is widespread. ISKNV (Infectious spleen and kidney necrosis virus)
was present in 80% of the farms, bacterial pathogens in 68%, and farmers reported median mortality charges of 70%.
Hatcheries are a vital welfare bottleneck. Survival charges in Ghanaian hatcheries are usually 40–70%, in contrast with 80–90% in grow-out methods. Pathogens have been detected in broodstock, eggs, and youth phases, but no main initiative has straight focused hatchery welfare.
Stocking density is the highest-impact, lowest-cost intervention. Overstocking drives each welfare and productiveness issues. Decreasing density requires no capital funding and improves feed conversion, important provided that feed accounts for 60–70% of manufacturing prices.
The federal government can ship at scale when motivated. The ISKNV vaccination programme demonstrated that national-level implementation capability exists. The constraint is political precedence, not institutional capability.
Act 1146 creates a time-limited regulatory window. Implementing laws should be drafted inside a 12 months. The Act’s licensing and enforcement framework can accommodate welfare requirements by way of subsidiary laws, with out the necessity for brand new major laws.
Welfare should be framed round economics, not ethics. Throughout each challenge reviewed, interventions succeeded when linked to productiveness, biosecurity, price financial savings, or export readiness. Standalone moral framing doesn’t achieve traction with farmers or authorities, and we design accordingly.
What are essentially the most important challenges you presently face in advancing your mission?
Each stage of this work comes with actual friction, and we’ve needed to be intentional about how we navigate it.
Animal welfare isn’t a authorities precedence in Ghana or throughout a lot of Africa. We deal with this by anchoring our advocacy in interventions that serve pursuits governments already care about, whereas making certain these interventions ship essentially the most influence for animals.
Authorities timelines can shift unpredictably resulting from session processes and approval paperwork. We’ve discovered to construct relationships with high-level people inside our goal establishments early, as a result of belief on the proper ranges can transfer issues quicker than formal processes alone.
Weak enforcement is a systemic problem throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Quite than struggle that actuality, we design interventions that match inside present enforcement frameworks whereas step by step constructing authorities capability to do extra.
Lastly, as a lean group working remotely, we face sensible challenges. Stakeholders typically wish to go to a bodily workplace, and sustaining one can be a compliance requirement. We’re actively fundraising to safe a everlasting house that displays the credibility of the work we’re doing.
How has the ACE Motion Grant helped strengthen SHARED’s work?
The ACE Motion Grant has been foundational to our progress. Coverage advocacy for animals is difficult anyplace, however in Africa, the place the sphere continues to be rising, having funders who perceive that and consider in what we’re constructing makes an infinite distinction.
Our most up-to-date and important success was securing authorities settlement to incorporate aquaculture well being and fish welfare throughout the scope of implementing laws beneath Ghana’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Act, 2025 (Act 1146). This scope enlargement got here straight from SHARED’s engagement with the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture and the Fisheries Fee, and it will not have been potential with out the help we acquired from ACE.
We’ve additionally been appointed to guide the Fish Well being Cluster throughout the Technical Working Group, giving SHARED direct accountability for drafting the fish well being and welfare provisions. That’s a significant seat on the desk, and it displays what sustained, evidence-based engagement can obtain.
When you needed to share a last message with the ACE viewers, what wouldn’t it be?
Farmed animal agriculture is increasing quickly throughout Africa, and since it’s nonetheless in its early phases, there’s a real window to form the way it develops. At this time, we are able to affect the requirements, practices, and laws that govern it earlier than dangerous norms change into entrenched.
Coverage advocacy is without doubt one of the strongest instruments accessible to try this. However to be efficient, it must be grounded in domestically contextualised analysis, proof that displays the true circumstances, incentives, and methods in African contexts, not transplanted assumptions from elsewhere.
Africa wants extra researchers, extra advocates, and extra funders prepared to spend money on that work. The chance to get forward of business animal agriculture on this continent is actual. We shouldn’t let it cross.
Discover extra conversations in our Month-to-month Highlight collection.
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