Improving donkey welfare in Ethiopia: Using a sustainable scalable integrated community-based approach
Authors: Duguma Bojia E. , Price Sally J. , Blakeway Stephen 
Published: February 2025

Background and study aims: In Ethiopia, the country with the world’s largest population of donkeys, how can people and donkeys live well together within thriving communities and a healthy environment? When human-animal relationships are often constrained by economic hardship and lack of options with limited access to equine health services and lack of awareness on proper management and care, how can external agencies best help? This article describes an integrated community-based (ICB) action-research programme to demonstrate a sustainable and scalable model for improving donkey welfare that ran from 2012 to 2017 in nine kebeles across Tigray, Amhara, and Sidama Regions in Ethiopia as part of an international body of work. Methods: A participatory approach involving communities, service providers, Departments of Animal Health, Education, Transport, and local administrations was employed from inception and design, planning, implementation and monitoring, through a series of participatory cycles. The programme integrated primary health care, harness improvement, community engagement, social behaviour change, and animal welfare education in schools. An exit strategy aimed at ensuring sustainability was built into each part of the programme with external support reducing as local capacity grew. Main findings: The programme built the capacity of partner institutions and empowered service providers in equine education. Recognition of the value of donkeys increased as relationships between donkeys and owners improved. Owners adopted improved harnesses and packsaddles and measures to reduce lameness. Disease burden was reduced alongside the transformation of veterinary clinics which became more education and equine focused. All this led to improved body and working conditions for donkeys with a significantly reduced prevalence of clinical wounds from 49.8% (95% CI: 47.8%–51.8%) in 2013 to 16.2% (95% CI, 13.7–18.7%) in 2016, a threefold reduction across the three regions. Principal conclusions: An integrated community-based approach proved an effective model for sustainably improving donkey welfare while also empowering communities and service providers with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, confidence and networks to become self-reliant. Better health and preventive approaches to wounds, parasites and other welfare challenges improved the efficiency of donkey work and reduced the use of environmentally harmful pharmaceuticals. Embarking on this sort of work requires an understanding of and commitment to a realistic time frame to achieve sustainable outcomes for local communities and institutions. Ideally, organizations planning to use the ICB model to improve working equine welfare would involve more partners, including but not limited to public-private partnerships and livelihoods, climate, gender and environment specialists within a One Welfare One Health framework.

One Health impact statement

This article describes an integrated community-based programme that includes animal health and welfare, improvement of equine harness technology, and inclusion of policy makers from affiliated sectors at each stage of the project cycle.

Exploring core beliefs and addressing donkey owners’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices contributed to a significant long-term impact on improving donkey welfare. Life skills development in schoolchildren fostered empathy and strengthened relationships between children and donkeys.

By improving human-donkey relationships, harnesses and packsaddles, and reducing wound prevalence by a third, the programme reduced the need for antibiotics, extended the healthy working lives of donkeys, and helped owners increase revenue and improve their livelihoods.

Implementation of strategic and tactical deworming reduced the use and misuse of environmentally hazardous anthelmintics. The availability of humane euthanasia for end-of-life donkeys improved welfare and reduced abandonment of terminally ill animals, which reduced sources of infection while also improving the public image.