Big News: ASREP Africa Featured in The Guardian & Biographic Magazine — Global Conservation Stories

In March 2026, The Guardian's global environment desk published an in-depth feature examining the future of conservation in a world where US foreign aid — long the cornerstone of biodiversity and environmental programmes across the Global South — has been dramatically curtailed. ASREP Africa and its Executive Director, Dida E. Fayo, were highlighted as a model for what locally-led conservation organisations can achieve without dependency on US government funding.

The context for the article was stark. The withdrawal of USAID funding from environmental programmes across Africa, Asia, and Latin America has created what conservation leaders are calling a "funding cliff" — a sudden and severe reduction in the financial infrastructure that has supported protected area management, wildlife conservation, and community environmental education for decades. The Guardian documented how major international conservation NGOs are struggling to adapt, while a new generation of locally-rooted organisations is demonstrating a fundamentally different model.

ASREP's Model: Why It Is Different

ASREP Africa was founded in 2023 with a deliberate decision: to build an organisation whose survival and impact are not contingent on the continued flow of international aid. This is not idealism. It reflects a hard-learned lesson from decades of development work in Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands.

"The communities we work with have been present in these landscapes for centuries. They do not need to be told about conservation — they have practised it. What they need is an organisation that amplifies their knowledge and connects them to resources and platforms where that knowledge is valued."

Dida Fayo, who holds a PhD candidacy and previously served as Director of Programs at the Northern Rangelands Trust, brought to ASREP Africa a deep scepticism of the "conservation-as-external-intervention" model. The organisation's six programmes — spanning climate resilience, peacebuilding, research, civic governance, biodiversity, and livelihoods — are all designed around community agency, not community compliance.

What The Guardian's Feature Documented

The Guardian's reporting focused specifically on the Waso Eco-Champions programme, ASREP's flagship community ecological restoration initiative. Journalists documented the 2,000-strong network of community stewards across Isiolo County, the 10,000 indigenous trees planted without a single dollar of USAID funding, and the institutional partnerships with the Kenya Forest Service and Kenya Wildlife Service that provide technical credibility and government recognition.

The feature also highlighted the contrast between ASREP's model and that of larger international NGOs in the region. Where international organisations often bring standardised programme designs, external staff, and reporting structures oriented toward distant donors, ASREP works through existing community governance structures, employs local staff, and reports primarily to the communities it serves.

Biographic Magazine: International Conservation Media Takes Notice

Shortly after the Guardian feature, ASREP Africa was also profiled in Biographic Magazine — the digital magazine published by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance that covers conservation science and stories globally. The Biographic feature examined ASREP's work through the lens of community-funded ecological restoration, exploring how the organisation is building financial sustainability through partnerships with institutions including the Kenya School of Government and community-based enterprises.

Together, these two international features — one from a major daily newspaper, one from a leading conservation publication — signal that ASREP Africa's model has achieved recognition beyond the immediate region. This recognition carries practical consequences: it opens doors to collaborative research, international speaking platforms, and relationships with global conservation networks that can provide non-financial support including technical expertise, peer learning, and advocacy amplification.

Local Leadership as Conservation Strategy

ASREP Africa's appearance in The Guardian was notable not just for the organisation but for what it represents in the broader conservation landscape. For decades, the dominant narrative has positioned conservation as something that flows from north to south — expertise, funding, models, and standards generated in the Global North and applied in the Global South.

ASREP's work challenges this narrative from the inside, not through rhetoric but through demonstrated practice. The Waso Eco-Champions are Isiolo County residents who decided that their landscape needed restoration and organised to achieve it. The Isiolo Peace Actors Forum is run by pastoral community members who decided that durable peace requires their direct participation. The ASAL Indigenous Knowledge Vault was created because Borana Oromo communities recognised that their ecological knowledge was being lost and deserved documentation.

Learn more about how ASREP Africa is building conservation and biodiversity programmes rooted in community leadership across Kenya's ASALs.