The kitchen that fuels the Akashinga vegan warriors
Empowering an all-female anti-poaching unit

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Overview
In Zimbabwe’s Lower Zambezi Valley, the local heroes are an all-female, all-vegan, anti-poaching unit. You may have heard of them. Akashinga (“The Brave Ones”) have made global news headlines. Their rigorous training method is featured in The Game Changers. And, most recently, they are the subject of a short film from James Cameron and National Geographic Documentary Films called Akashinga: The Brave Ones.
Akashinga is a community-driven conservation program of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF). This initiative employs and trains women to be rangers and biodiversity managers. These rangers then protect lands previously used for and financed by trophy hunting.
When IAPF founder Damien Mander launched Akashinga in 2017, he knew that he wanted the unit to be vegan and have a positive impact in Zimbabwe and beyond.
He teamed up with Nicola Kagoro (founder of African Vegan on a Budget and better known as Chef Cola) to create the Akashinga Back to Black Roots Vegan Kitchen and Garden. Beyond establishing a vegan camp kitchen in the bush (a challenge in itself), Back to Black Roots is a grassroots vegan movement promoting a healthy, ethical, and affordable lifestyle in rural Africa. The name “Back to Black Roots” refers to the prevalence of plant-based diets in Africa before Westerners introduced commercial animal farming. Akashinga rangers teach their families about the benefits of a plant-based diet and carry the movement to their communities.

We use a lot of dried grains mixed with fresh produce, both vegetables and fruits. The focus in sourcing is on empowering the local community and supporting small entrepreneurs (who might have banana farms or tomato gardens).
Chef Cola, founder of IAPF’s Akashinga Back to Black Roots Vegan Kitchen and Garden

Since 2018, the Akashinga Back to Black Roots Kitchen and Garden has used a grant from VegFund to expand its mission. In 2019, IAPF’s Akashinga patrols managed one million acres across five parks, and the kitchen served 54,853 meals. The number of acres under management, rangers trained, and vegan meals provided continues to grow. IAPF plans to employ 1,000 female rangers as the Akashinga program scales from five parks to twenty by 2025.
Goals
- Develop healthy, plant-based meal plans and mindset for all Akashinga rangers and staff for the long term
- Extend the program to families of Akashinga staff
- Implement vegan awareness programs for communities
- Graduate leaders from six communities as plant-based mentors to plan, develop, and implement the program in additional communities
171
rangers, staff, and trainees
54,853
vegan meals served in 2019
160
new rangers to be trained by end of 2021
Approach
The Akashinga rangers come from rural villages where people typically eat meat. While at camp and on patrol in the field, the rangers eat plant-based meals. When they go home, they are free to eat what they choose, but while most rangers and staff were initially non-vegan, their compassion for wildlife has moved them to protect all animals instead of eating them. According to organizers, most of the women start to change their dietary behaviors at home within 3 to 6 months and eventually shift to plant-based eating.
This shift in their belief system has spread to their families, and most importantly, to their young children, who are now seeing both animals and food in a new light. Over the next five years, the Akashinga Back to Black Roots Vegan Kitchen and Garden will continue to gather data on their own families and how the program impacts their communities.

The Akashinga rangers are now considered rock stars to the local school kids. Monitoring the impact of their leadership will be exciting to witness.
Damien Mander, IAPF Founder and Akashinga Creator

Akashinga Back to Black Roots Vegan Kitchen and Garden:
- Prepares healthy and tasty camp meals and tactical rations for Akashinga staff
- Focuses on reintroducing and encouraging traditional African eating habits
- Uses local, readily available traditional foods
Under Chef Cola’s supervision, the kitchen provides three meals a day to 171 people housed at IAPF’s camp in Nyamakati. Those on patrol carry rations to sustain them while in the bush. This process can be tricky because temperatures in Nyamakati are extremely hot, making food go bad quickly. And, for tactical reasons, rangers can’t keep fires going for cooking or reheating. The solution? A food dryer prepares dry fruits and vegetables that will travel well and be light in their packs.
Their work doesn’t stop at preparing nutritious meals and rations, though. The kitchen also raises awareness by discussing environmental conservation and animal welfare, from bushmeat poaching to the negative effects that eating meat has on their land and communities.

The Akashinga team is not only thriving, but thriving on a plant-based diet. This is being achieved in one of the most remote locations in one of the hardest countries in the world to operate. A team of chefs is working around the clock, working with rangers who are learning how to grow their own food, prepare their own meal plans and meals, speak about their diets from an ethical, environmental, and nutritional standpoint, and who are passing this knowledge on to their families and communities.
Damien Mander, IAPF Founder and Akashinga Creator

Setting up the kitchen
In its first two years, Back to Black Roots focused on developing long-term, healthy, plant-based meal plans and mindsets for the Akashinga rangers, staff, and their families. But in the bush, where there is no electricity, training staff on a whole new type of cooking takes extra planning:
- Developing knowledge and skills to run a plant-based kitchen
- equipment requirements
- quality and quantity control
- standard operating procedures
- standard cooking methods
- basic knife skills
- stock/storeroom controls
- Assessing food availability, from sourcing to menu development
- Learning about budgeting, planning meals, and developing recipes
- Starting a garden to supply the kitchen
- Outfitting chefs in uniforms, which encourages seriousness and professionalism
- Acquiring a solar dryer for food preservation
IAPF’s Akashinga Back to Black Roots Vegan Kitchen founder, Chef Cola, took an online course on plant-based nutrition through the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutritional Studies of Cornell University in the United States. She also engaged a camp nutritionist to assess the Akashinga menu.

The up-to-date knowledge of modern vegan affairs taking place globally positively impacted the Back to Black Roots Kitchen. I took that knowledge and shared it with my team. We all internalized and continue to reference Dr. T. Colin Campbell in our kitchen and garden.
Chef Cola, founder of IAPF’s Akashinga Back to Black Roots Vegan Kitchen and Garden

As time and resources allow, the Back to Black Roots Vegan Kitchen will expand its garden space and use low-impact tools and technology to reduce the kitchen’s reliance on food sources elsewhere. Plans include:
- Building a greenhouse
- Constructing a cabin for growing mushrooms
- Establishing an orchard to grow fruit such as lemons, oranges, mangoes, bananas, avocados, and sugar cane
Getting the word out
The next stage of the project is all about getting the word out. By advertising the kitchen’s activities in the bush to urban communities, they are able to share a vegan message far and wide. Outreach events that demonstrate the benefits of a vegan life include screening films such as The Game Changers (translated into the local Shona language) and hosting community dinners.
In 2019, Back to Black Roots Vegan Kitchen hosted three 25-guest dinners in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. There, IAPF founder Damien Mander spoke to an urban population on the vegan component of the Akashinga Camp (if you have a moment, be sure to watch his Tedx talk).
Top Tip
Look for ways to work with others in your vegan advocacy. The Akashinga rangers are part of the communities in which they work, and this is critical to reducing wildlife crime. These rangers are now empowered to solve the problems they see in their own communities while leading meaningful and independent lives.
What’s next?
The Akashinga Back to Black Roots Vegan Kitchen and Garden is working to feed wildlife conservation patrols in Zimbabwe, and it’s ready to scale! When Akashinga began patrolling, rangers saw wildlife as infrequently as once a week. Now, they see the animals that they are protecting during every patrol! In fact, since mid-year 2016, they’ve seen a 90% reduction of elephant poaching. The next goal is to scale up to 1,000 female rangers by 2025, all fueled by plant-based meals. These rangers will patrol twenty parks. They are continuing to inspire the vegan movement in Zimbabwe and across the globe.

As the program expands to 1,000 women in 2025, the messaging potential for the plant-based movement in driving the largest female army, protecting some of the world’s most iconic ecosystems, cannot be missed.
Damien Mander, IAPF Founder and Akashinga Creator

Story by Molly Elwood
Images courtesy of Brent Stirton and the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF)
Image of Chef Cola courtesy of Kim Butts, National Geographic