Karibu to the WILDLABS East Africa Community!
Why WE Exist
After 7 years of strategically building the global WILDLABS community, it was now time for our team to venture into the next phase of our programme: creating regional virtual hubs. The very first regional hub to go live is the East Africa community, a space that will create opportunities for members to build their knowledge, skills, expertise and reach. The idea behind creating the EA community spanned from the need to foster connections and collaborations of conservation and technology players in EA as well as make a true positive impact by tailoring resources and opportunities that will help solve conservation challenges in the region. Learn more
All we do at WILDLABS is firmly grounded on the community we serve and hope to serve! As part of this commitment, time and resources have been dedicated to ensure that this platform will be a reliable and credible resource to advance one’s knowledge, skills and be a step towards solving some of the most pressing conservation issues WE face in East Africa.
WE exist to fulfill the needs of conservation technology players in East Africa through resources & opportunities, to add value to their work, to inspire innovation & collaboration and most importantly, to contribute towards making the world a better place!
What WE Hope To Achieve
Purposefully designed to connect conservation technology practitioners and experts based in East Africa, the WILDLABS EA community will be a great space to access and share conservation technology resources, ask and answer questions unique to the landscape, collaborate and generate new and innovative ideas.
This platform is a great space for members to collaboratively fill in regional conservation tech knowledge and skills gaps present and share their work and other resources, reducing and/or eliminating replication and leading to more streamlined and effective solutions. Through the conversations taking place within the community, members will be able to connect with each other and get advice to advance their work, careers, and innovative ideas.
The community hopes to encourage level interactions that will generate new ideas on solving regional conservation tech challenges, encourage innovation, introduce members to new applications of tech in conservation, as well as spark new questions on Conservation tech in EA.
How To Get Involved
Are you keen on getting involved and understanding the intersection of conservation and technology in East Africa? This community offers an exceptional space where you can join us and get involved; to learn, share, collaborate and support one another on matters regarding conservation technology in East Africa. From posting articles, engaging in discussions, attending virtual and in-person events to supporting, applying or taking part in Programmes and opportunities in the community, these are some of the ways for you to get involved.
The first thing you can do when joining our community is to jump into our welcome thread and introduce yourself to our community. Get started here
Resources
The WILDLABS team is dedicated to making conservation tech resources accessible to the whole community in a strategic and equitable manner. With a myriad of engaging events, programmes, weekly conversations and opportunities lined up, the East Africa community will be a great virtual place to build one’s skills, knowledge, and networks. Growing a vibrant and diverse community will be made possible by the collaborative efforts of all members through their interactions and their active participation in regional activities organized/supported by WILDLABS.
Some of the resources that will give you a feel of Conservation technology tools and systems implemented in East Africa include:
- Using IoT and Machine Learning to Protect Kenya's Rivers.
- Learning Resource: Exploring Species Interactions with Snapshot Serengeti.
- Mobile Phone Reporting for Rapid Wildlife Health Response in Uganda
Members of the East Africa community are invited to share their projects, organizations, experiences, failures, and ideas in their Conservation Tech work, to support the development of tools that will form part of the resources made available to other members.
Programmes
Women in Conservation Technology Programme
With a cohort of 15 talented and emerging female conservationists, our inaugural Women in Conservation Technology Programme, is the first of many Programmes organized for the community. WILDLABS, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, and Fauna & Flora International partnered to run this programme as the very first opportunity organized for the East Africa community.
This programme is designed for early career Kenyan women in conservation who are looking to explore emerging conservation technologies. In addition to in-person and virtual training on foundational skills and knowledge on conservation technologies to overcome conservation and wildlife challenges in Kenya, participants have an opportunity to network with a strong cohort of other women leaders in the field and gain professional development skills. Through this unique blend of training and networking, we hope to empower Kenyan women in conservation who are often underrepresented in the sector. It is an avenue to encourage the group to generate innovative ideas, novel solutions, and diverse perspectives that engender conservation success.
We received close to 200 outstanding applications for the Programme this year, and this reminded us of the collaborative conservation efforts, implemented through great projects running, exceptional conservation and technology organizations and visionary conservationists in East Africa. We hope to reach more conservation technologists to build their knowledge and skills through such trainings and capacity building Programmes.
'Women in Science are often underrepresented in Kenya. Intentionally creating this training Programme for Women in Conservation Technology goes a long way to show that well-thought out initiatives are currently being put in place to empower women in the field. This Programme will not only benefit me, but will be a motivation to upcoming Women in Conservation Technology.'~ Consolata Gathoni Gitau
With the knowledge and skills garnered from this programme, participants will be able to spread awareness of novel conservation technology solutions to their home organizations and empower other female conservationists. We believe that this Programme is a great strategic direction towards empowering early career female conservationists!
Events
From in-person and virtual events, this hub is a great place tailored for conservationists and technologists in East Africa to support each other in creating novel solutions to complex regional conservation challenges. The East Africa community will be part of already established virtual events such as Tech Tutors and Virtual meetups, where topics covered will answer questions related to conservation challenges unique to East Africa. The virtual events will bring together members and participants to learn new skills, get expert advice, ask questions, gain knowledge and foster existing knowledge and skills.
The East Africa community exists because of each of you, and we hope you are happy to join and use the platform for knowledge sharing, collaboration and networking. You can join the community and interact with other members here. To get in touch with Netty Cheruto, our WILDLABS East Africa Community Coordinator, email her at: [email protected].
Header Image: @Dylan Habil
Group curators
- @EstherGithinji
- | She/Her
WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora
I am the WILDLABS East Africa Conservation Technology Coordinator
- 102 Resources
- 32 Discussions
- 4 Groups
FFI is offering a paid internship with the WILDLABS Programme for a 12 month period from March 2023-Feb 2024. This internship will grow and support the WILDLABS East Africa regional community in our global conservation...
9 March 2023
Article
Assessing the Efficacy of a Novel Olfactory Approach to Mitigating Elephant Crop Raiding in Uganda and Kenya
24 February 2023
Scholarships available for training courses focussing on nature restoration in East Africa
21 February 2023
ZSL is seeking to recruit a Monitoring & Technology Technical Specialist for ZSL’s Kenya country programme to provide training and technical support to our partners working to conserve biodiversity in Protected and...
15 February 2023
Article
Meet the women and men supporting gender equality in conservation #tech. Here is a panel discussion the Women in Conservation Tech (WiCT) led in November 2022, during the EarthRanger User Conference (ERUC). Opening up...
30 January 2023
The WILDLABS Tech Tutors are here to answer your ‘How do I do that?’ questions of conservation technology. This season, our expert speakers will cover tools and topics that help address conservation challenges unique...
18 January 2023
Careers
The Senior Conservation Technology Specialist will be responsible for providing technical advice and capacity development to GWP project teams on conservation technology, distilling challenges and lessons from project...
22 September 2022
As we wrap up Year 1 of building the East Africa community, here are a few of my key takeaways and my vision for the community. Moving forward, I hope you can find opportunities through this network, to contribute to...
7 September 2022
For the past one year, we have been working to establish and grow the East Africa community. The network now exists to foster collaboration, advance conservation technology work in the region and build capacity through...
7 September 2022
Article
An update on Ceres Tags products that are being used in conservation
22 August 2022
Funding
Through this Competition, RCMRD aims to enhance the role of Geo-conservation in Protected Areas Management and Environmental Conservation. With a Total Prize Tag of 10,000 Euros, participants will be required to use...
19 August 2022
Careers
Mara Elephant Project is looking to hire a developer to be based full-time in Nairobi at the Mara Elephant Project office located on Karen. The role will also require frequent field visits to the project HQ located in...
19 August 2022
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Lovely to hear from you Kylie :) Thanks so much for contributing your thoughts and ideas towards this. |
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East Africa Community | 9 months 3 weeks ago | |
Conservation Training Programs:Tropical Biology AssociationTraining conservation leaders and giving them the skills and support they need to be effective on the ground. TBA... |
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East Africa Community, Women in Conservation Tech Programme (WiCT) | 10 months ago | |
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Climate Change, Community Base, East Africa Community, Emerging Tech, Software and Mobile Apps | 10 months 1 week ago | ||
@richardturere Hello :) and a warm welcome to WILDLABS! Here is the link to @Lekato Samuel Lekato - Founder and Chairman, Enduata Emaa CBO. Sam is interested in conservation... |
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Citizen Science, Climate Change, Community Base, Connectivity, Conservation Tech Training and Education, East Africa Community, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 10 months 2 weeks ago | |
Ben Letcher from the comment below will be able to provide much more in-depth info, but feel free to email me at [email protected] |
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East Africa Community, Sensors | 11 months ago | |
Hey everyone,On Thursday 11th May, Howard Frederick from Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute will be covering a Tech... |
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Community Base, East Africa Community, Protected Area Management Tools | 1 year 1 month ago | |
greetings! i sent you a PM regarding this, feel free to contact me however is most convenient for you - regards,chris |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Climate Change, East Africa Community, Wildlife Crime | 1 year 1 month ago | |
Hi Rupert,My name is Jordan Steward and I lead comms and marketing for EarthRanger. Happy to put you in contact with a member of our team who can help you out here. My email is... |
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East Africa Community, Protected Area Management Tools | 1 year 2 months ago | |
Hi Carly,There are no built in automatic drop-off mechanism for the tags. We do have customers that have purchased and incorporated the tag into different types of harness and... |
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Biologging, East Africa Community | 1 year 8 months ago | |
@Ann_Wambui , Qgis and ArcGis Desktop are stand alone apps that are useful in coming up with geojson files and/or shapefiles that store the location, shape, and attributes of... |
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Data management and processing tools, East Africa Community, Protected Area Management Tools | 1 year 9 months ago | |
HI benard sorry am replying late,and yes i the data was exported as shapefile 2.i used same projection which is 37N WGS 84 on both apps and still the exported shape file... |
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Remote Sensing & GIS, East Africa Community | 1 year 10 months ago | |
100%! Also heard many asking about SMART Connect & Mobile, and their integration with other software.Thank you for your input :) |
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Community Base, East Africa Community | 1 year 10 months ago |