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
WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora International (FFI)
I am the WILDLABS East Africa Community Coordinator
- 6 Resources
- 23 Discussions
- 7 Groups
Programme Manager, Bahari Hai Conservation
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 3 Groups
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 1 Groups
A systems and policy specialist, currently working as the Quality & Accreditation Manager for Ceres Tag.
- 0 Resources
- 4 Discussions
- 14 Groups
Wildlife Biologist and Conservation Scientist
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 4 Groups
Ol Pejeta Conservancy
Deputy Technology Manager
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 7 Groups
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 1 Groups
Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS)
M&E specialist. Conservation Scientist
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 2 Groups
A marine research intern and science communicator with experience in photography, filmmaking, and collaborating on multi-disciplinary and community-centered marine research focusing on: fisheries management, seagrass ecosystems, and ocean literacy
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 4 Groups
Wildlife Protection Solutions (WPS)
Technology Coordinator at Wildlife Protection Solutions
- 0 Resources
- 7 Discussions
- 8 Groups
A budding wildlife researcher focusing on giraffe.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 3 Groups
Ol Pejeta Conservancy
IT Engineer at The Conservation Tech Lab in Ol Pejeta Conservancy. |Endeavoring to implement tech solutions for conservation.
- 0 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 8 Groups
Ecologist with a passion for wildlife conservation and conservation technology with foundational training in BSc and MSc Rangeland Management (Ecology option).
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 5 Groups
In an effort to sustainably supply clean water within the conservancy, Ol Pejeta has installed Hydropanels; a water technology that utilizes solar energy to extract clean, pollutant-free drinking water from the...
29 June 2022
In May, we kicked off the six month Women in Conservation Tech programme with our first in-person workshop. This was a jam-packed week of technical training, field activities, professional development and empowerment...
14 June 2022
4
Baotree addresses the challenge of data collection at the grassroots level; to ensure participatory, accurate and verifiable data is captured. A software piloted in Kenya and looking to scale globally, Baotree has so...
9 June 2022
1
Giraffe Conservation Foundation is seeking a Conservation Science Data Specialist, with a background in Computer sciences or Natural sciences, to assist with the day-to-day management and analysis of data to advance...
17 May 2022
Community Announcement
Are you an early career Kenyan conservationist looking to explore emerging conservation technologies while networking with a strong cohort of other female leaders? Apply now for our 6-month Women in Conservation Tech...
8 March 2022
On 3rd November 2021, Earthranger Announced Giraffe Conservation Foundation and Lion Guardians as the inaugral Conservation Tech Award Recipients. The two organizations are Harnessing the Power of Technology to Protect...
3 November 2021
1
In their three-part interview from our new series Technical Difficulties, Colby Loucks and Eric Becker share the failures they've encountered and learned from throughout six years of working on the WWF-US Wildlife Crime...
27 October 2021
This article explores the use of IoT and Machine Learning Technologies in Ewaso Nyiro River, Kenya - which serves several communities as well as wildlife in Olpejeta Conservancy and Lewa Conservancy, among others. Data...
21 October 2021
This article outlines how acoustic monitoring of bird species provides a means to study ecosystems with minimal disturbance and over wide areas. Birds are excellent indicator species, therefore, monitoring their trend...
21 October 2021
In his contribution to the Technical Difficulties Editorial Series, Internet of Elephants founder Gautam Shah shares the lessons learned from challenges throughout his unique career path as an entrepreneur working and...
14 October 2021
In Alina Peter's and Kristen Snyder's contribution to the Technical Difficulties Editorial Series, you'll receive a practical checklist of factors and questions to consider at various stages of your conservation...
13 October 2021
Read our interview with early career conservationist and CLP Future Conservationist Award recipient Owino Raymond, who is working with camera traps along the Kenya-Somalia border to understand and reduce conflict...
21 May 2021
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi Turu, To be able to assist you, I would like to understand the following first:1. What feature of data did you export/get from EarthRanger? i.e shapefile? CSV? etc.2. What... |
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Remote Sensing & GIS, East Africa Community | 1 day 11 hours ago | |
The overriding objective of many economies in East Africa is to progress the nations with more efficient systems in the different sectors, to achieve sustainability. With... |
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East Africa Community | 2 days 15 hours ago | |
its nylon rubber material |
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East Africa Community, Biologging | 6 days 8 hours ago | |
Thank you so much Netty, I really enjoyed it.Good luck to you all with your work.Keep well! |
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AI for Conservation, East Africa Community | 1 week 1 day ago | |
Hi Ann,The best thing to do is contact Nic and Hannes directly: https://wildeyeconservation.org/contact-us/They can provide you with an overview of the software and answer... |
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Camera Traps, East Africa Community | 2 weeks ago | |
Hey Carly,Good question. Data collection for the assessment was structured into; Interviews (12 conservation organizations were interviewed), online survey (64 respondents) and... |
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East Africa Community | 2 weeks 4 days ago | |
Very Insightful Ken! Great to see how the team at Ol Pejeta has been keen on integrating EarthRanger with other software, to have everything in a single system and better monitor... |
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East Africa Community, Protected Area Management Tools | 3 weeks 1 day ago | |
Thank You Netty! I love the new developments and the community setup. I am excited to see what is next. Thank you. |
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East Africa Community | 1 month 3 weeks ago |
How are you contributing to Regional or Local Sustainability?
29 June 2022 at 07:52am
Hydropanels; a self-sustaining renewable water technology
29 June 2022 at 06:39am
Earth Ranger Projection
28 June 2022 at 10:15am
Live Q&A session on AI models for Processing Camera Trap Imagery:A highlight of WildID.
22 June 2022 at 01:42pm
Live Q&A on AI models to process Camera Trap Imagery: All about WildID
21 June 2022 at 06:49am
23 June 2022 at 11:35am
Nothing too much more to share about WildID - I think you've had an earful already! But just to say that we really do enjoy working with our users, so don't be shy to get in touch for any questions, or think you would be bothering us if you need support. We're excited to bring more projects on board and extend our training sets to new locations, camera types and species.
For those in regions outside Africa, we are considering releasing a version of WildID that uses MegaDetector from Microsoft AI - so it will classify your images into empties, and then human, vehicle and animal (just those three classes). You would then be able to define your own species list, and edit the animal pictures to the correct species. Still a fair amount of work for you to edit, but you are probably doing the work already, and at least you would have an easy interface in which to do it, and particularly empties excluded already for you. Get in touch with us if this would be of use to you.
23 June 2022 at 11:43am
Thank you so much Kate for the excellent answers, explanations, insights and pointers; This was nothing short of Amazing!
Thank you all for joining us in this discussion; I hope this has been helpful and you now have a solution for processing your 1 million + camera trap imagery. If you have any questions for Kate, please feel free to drop them in this discussion thread- she is more than happy to answer. If you’d like to reach out to Kate directly, you can Direct message her here or send her an email at: [email protected]
Thank you!
23 June 2022 at 11:45am
Thank you so much Netty, I really enjoyed it.
Good luck to you all with your work.
Keep well!
The Women in Conservation Technology Programme: Reporting from our Opening Workshop
14 June 2022 at 06:49am
Conservation Technology Gaps in East Africa
13 June 2022 at 12:19pm
13 June 2022 at 02:21pm
Out of curiosity, how many people responded to this survey and what kinds of institutions did they come from? E.g., government agencies, universities, non-profits, etc. And am I right in assuming this was just in Kenya or was it from a broader region? I'm not that familiar with the regions listed in the first figure :)
13 June 2022 at 05:23pm
Hey Carly,
Good question. Data collection for the assessment was structured into; Interviews (12 conservation organizations were interviewed), online survey (64 respondents) and workshop (22 attended a two-day workshop). Those who took the assessment were from conservancies; both private and community owned, conservancy associations, government bodies/parastatals e.g Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenya Space Agency and Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD).
The conservancies and organizations are in Kenya but most have transboundary projects across East Africa. To complement the assessment, we also did desk research and spoke to a couple of stakeholders across the larger East Africa region and majority of the findings were quite similar e.g. need for tech training on i.e. GIS/RS tools (access, manipulation and use of data), data management and Protected area Management tools (selecting most appropriate tools and integration) and barriers to adopting up-to date tech due to the high cost and inadequate skills etc.
Elephant Collar
11 June 2022 at 03:53pm
16 June 2022 at 11:33pm
Great work @kangs and Technology For Wildlife Africa! Can I ask, what's the collar material made out of?
Cheers,
Rob
25 June 2022 at 03:26pm
its nylon rubber material
Baotree;A Participatory Data Management Tool Piloted in Kenya.
9 June 2022 at 08:02am
Are you Using EarthRanger?
9 June 2022 at 06:02am
9 June 2022 at 09:15am
At Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya, we have deployed EarthRanger to have a central place where on one single system we can monitor key wildlife such as the collared lions & Elephants, in real time, track our assets such as our patrol vehicles, and to store and analyze our ranger collected observation data in order identify trends and insights.
The use of EarthRanger in this manner has contributed significantly to our understanding wildlife movement and interaction behavior, helped us better address HWC issues, we also have a better picture of the various incidents occurring within the conservancy and their resolution. Finally, patrol effort is now much more easily managed and visualized ensuring that all areas of the conservancy get covered.
Our ER system has been integrated with SMART, and all the data collected in the field by our rangers using SMART MOBILE can be accessed and analyzed on EarthRanger.
Our analysis of data within EarthRanger is done using Tableau which comes bundled together with EarthRanger, this is how we can identify data trends to inform better decision making in the management of our resources.
The system has been up for over 3 years and we are continuously exploring the opportunities this tool has to offer with regards to protected area management.
9 June 2022 at 09:38am
Very Insightful Ken! Great to see how the team at Ol Pejeta has been keen on integrating EarthRanger with other software, to have everything in a single system and better monitor wildlife and manage resources.
Camera Trap Image analyzer
2 June 2022 at 10:41am
9 June 2022 at 04:31pm
Hello Stephanie,
Specifically I want to use trap tagger for analyzing camera trap images .I would be glad if I would get someone who will take me thought the software bit by bit.
Thanks,
16 June 2022 at 09:57am
Hi Ann
I'm afraid I don't know anything about trap tagger, but if you are looking to analyse camera trap data, and you are in Sub-Saharan Africa, you could also give WildID a try.
WildID does automatic species recognition in camera trap images, and then allows you to further annotate and tag your images with notes and other features. It works for 70 Southern African species, and the AI model was trained using images from Kenya and Tanzania, among other African countries.
You can register for a free trial of WildID at https://www.wildid.app - it would just take you a couple of minutes to register and get your first few images uploaded and detected, so you could see how it might work for you.
There is a comprehensive User Guide at https://userguide.wildid.app
I would also be very happy to give you a demo or a training session, and take you through the software. You can contact me on [email protected]
Hope this is helpful, and good luck with your project.
Kind regards, Kate
17 June 2022 at 03:58pm
Hi Ann,
The best thing to do is contact Nic and Hannes directly:
https://wildeyeconservation.org/contact-us/
They can provide you with an overview of the software and answer any questions you have. I've heard good things from a couple of others who have tried out TrapTagger.
Best,
Matt
Conservation Science Data Specialist

17 May 2022 at 10:09am
Passive Acoustic Monitoring - Malagasy Training Workshop
9 May 2022 at 04:10pm
Welcome to WILDLABS East Africa Community!
6 May 2022 at 06:47am
11 May 2022 at 11:58am
Thank You Netty! I love the new developments and the community setup. I am excited to see what is next. Thank you.
Women In Conservation Technology Programme, Kenya
5 May 2022 at 08:45am
Apply now: Women in Conservation Technology Programme, Kenya
8 March 2022 at 12:00am
30 June 2022 at 12:40pm
Hi Turu,
To be able to assist you, I would like to understand the following first:
1. What feature of data did you export/get from EarthRanger? i.e shapefile? CSV? etc.
2. What coordinate system was your data from EarthRanger?
2. When plotting did you match/project with the correct coordinate system?
3. Do you think there was an active layer with a different projection system in your work frame?
4. Did you check whether your work frame projection was correct to match what you were plotting?