The Rise of Industrial Animal Farming in Africa

[Content warning: Contains confronting images and/or video footage]

In late 2022, We Animals Founder Jo-Anne McArthur visited sub-Saharan Africa in collaboration with the African not-for-profit organization Sibanye Trust to investigate the growth of industrial animal farming in the region. Here she shares her account from her time in the field.

Photographer: Jo-Anne McArthur

From small farms holding a few hundred pigs in barren pens to cramped sheds holding 24,000 birds in each, I came home with visuals that show a diversity of how people and companies are keeping animals. I spoke with farmers about the trends in farming, and they all pointed toward intensification. “It’s not very kind for the birds,” a hen farmer explained, “but people don’t have purchasing power so eggs must be produced as cheaply as possible.”

I refer to “sub-Saharan Africa” – yes, a large territory! I’m choosing to withhold country names until we know it’s safe for me and our NGO partner to specify our whereabouts. For now, it is still not, but that is a story for another time.

The industrial farming of animals is on the rise on the African continent, and this is mobilizing animal and environmental advocacy organizations. The photos and videos of this worrisome trend that I created alongside my African colleagues will serve to help campaigners, educators and legislators to address the problem of a trend that could be stopped or reversed before it is entrenched, as it is in the west.

This is no easy feat in countries where eating more meat indicates a rise in upward mobility. More meat is associated with better health and prosperity. “Vegetarianism is laughable here,” said a colleague, in explaining that western campaigners are seeking to impose this solution, while African animal advocates are meeting society where it’s at. “This is why we are beginning with welfare campaigns, and raising awareness about farmed animal sentience.” Another campaigner countered the sentiment about vegetarianism’s status, saying that plant-based eating is on the rise in cities like Cape Town and Nairobi, and that the work ahead involves making sure that countries such as Chad, Mali, Sierra Leone and Senegal, in which plant-rich eating is the norm, remain that way. We kept a busy schedule of farm visits, and I returned home with pictures of caged hen facilities, floor-raised hen farms, broiler chicken farms, pig farms both small and large, fish farms and backyard animal projects that included ducks, turkeys, goats and rabbits. We visited farms owned by massive national companies: some had a hundred animals, while others had thousands. In some cases I was not granted permission to shoot, but conversations with farm managers still took place. “The future of pig farming is bright,” one young manager proclaimed after a farm tour in which the pigs were kept packed into filthy concrete pens.

It was evident that large farms were following the trends of the Global North. Broiler chicken farming systems and practices, for example, look virtually identical to me in Africa, Australia and North America. The way birds are collected by hand late at night is the same. Feed is the same, though farmers in Africa buy and make their own more locally. At an animal feeding operation we visited, where cows are fattened for beef, farmers grow maize in the surrounding fields to feed their cattle.

As with the farms I and our other photojournalists have visited globally, we’ve seen that the animals inside have nothing to do and little to live for. Hormones and the stress of confinement lead to fights, injuries and death. One pig farm did have enrichment for the animals crowded into pens: a solitary plastic burlap-style sack hanging from the ceiling into the middle of the room, dangling just above snout height so that they would have to work to gain purchase. The sacks were worn, and I wondered whether that was due to the pigs’ successes or if they’d simply weathered over time. Unlike farms I’ve visited in other countries, many of the pens here were open-air, with walls four or five feet high. The pigs were sold to slaughter at either 23 weeks of age, or 70 kg, “whichever came first,” we were told by a farm hand who escorted us around the property.

Similar to farms I have visited globally, animals are seen and treated as commodities here. Death on farms (before they are sent to slaughter) is an inevitable part of life. Veterinary care is expensive and therefore prohibitive. If animals can’t fight an infection or injury, they die. That’s it.

With my NGO colleagues, I also visited a busy live animal market in the heart of the city’s most dangerous township. We didn’t stay long, just long enough to capture photos of thirsty, despondent birds. A woman purchased a chicken, and I was allowed to photograph her having her legs tied together and then put in a plastic bag. They made a hole for her head to poke through. A far cry from the barns of 24,000 birds I visited earlier, yet nonetheless symbolic of the attitudes that African advocates are working hard to shift.

These photos offer a glimpse into the lives and deaths of animals on farms, and give us a sense of the work ahead.

Photographer: Jo-Anne McArthur

We’d like to express our thanks to our friends at the public policy action tank Brighter Green for connecting WAM to our African partners, Sibanye Trust.