For years, Chinese companies and their contractors have been slaughtering millions of donkeys across Africa, coveting the gelatin from the animals’ hides that are made into traditional medicines, popular sweets and beauty products in China.
But growing demand for gelatin has decimated donkey populations at such alarming rates in African countries that governments are now moving to put the brakes on the largely unregulated trade.
The African Union, a body comprising the continent’s 55 states, adopted a continent-wide ban on donkey skin exports this month in the hope that stocks will recover.
Rural households across Africa rely on donkeys for transport and agriculture.
However, donkeys only produce one foal every two years.
“A livelihood in Africa is fueling demand for luxury goods from the middle class in China,” said Emmanuel Sarr, head of the West Africa regional office for Brooke, a London-based non-governmental organization working to protect donkeys and of horses.
“This cannot go on.”
China is the main trading partner for many African countries. But in recent years its companies have come under increasing criticism for depleting the continent’s natural resources, from minerals to fish and now donkey hides, a slur once aimed largely at Western countries.
“This trade undermines mutual development talks between China and African countries,” said Lauren Johnston, an expert on China-Africa relations and an associate professor at the University of Sydney.
Some Chinese companies or local middlemen buy and slaughter donkeys legally, but government officials have also cracked down on clandestine slaughterhouses.
Rural communities in some African countries have also reported increasing cases of donkey theft, although there is no estimate of how widespread the illegal trade was.
Ethiopia is home to the largest population of donkeys in Africa, according to the Donkey Sanctuary, a British advocacy group. During a research trip there in 2017, Dr Johnston said many locals had shared their anger at China, “because they’re killing our donkeys”, she said.
The donkey skin trade in China is the key component of a multi-billion dollar industry for what the Chinese call ejiao, or donkey gelatin. It is a traditional medicine recognized by China’s health authorities, but whose true benefits remain under debate among doctors and researchers in China.
In recent years, what was once a luxury product has become increasingly mainstream as incomes have risen among China’s middle and upper classes. Salespeople for traditional Chinese medicine and health food companies have touted ejiao (pronounced UH-jee-ow in Mandarin) as having potential benefits for people with circulatory, gynecological or respiratory problems.
Ejiao-based food products have flourished: pastries made with ejiao, walnuts, sesame seeds and sugar have become a popular snack across China. a well-known tea beverage brand has targeted young consumers with ejiao milk tea.
Cathy Sha, a 30-year-old resident of Guangzhou, the commercial center of southeast China, said months of taking ejiao may have helped with recurring respiratory problems and cold sweats. Whatever the benefits, he said in text messages that he planned to continue consuming ejiao, a common practice among users of traditional Chinese medicine.
China’s ejiao industry now consumes between four and six million donkey skins each year – about 10 percent of the world’s donkey population, according to Chinese news reports and estimates from the Donkey Sanctuary. China used to source ejiao from donkeys in China. But its own herd has plummeted from more than nine million in 2000 to just over 1.7 million in 2022.
So in the past decade, China has begun to turn to Africa, home to 60 percent of the world’s donkeys, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
Donkeys are extremely hardy in harsh climates and can carry heavy loads for extended periods of time, making them a valuable resource in some parts of Africa. However, unlike other four-legged mammals, they are very slow to reproduce, and efforts to increase donkey breeding to industrial levels, including in China, have shown limited success.
The decline in some countries has been sudden and steep. Kenya’s donkey population halved from 2009 to 2019, according to Brooke’s research. A third of Botswana’s donkeys have disappeared in recent years. Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and other countries have also seen their reserves decline at a high rate.
Beijing has been unusually quiet on the African Union’s ban on donkey skin exports, even as it has criticized other measures to stem the flow of goods to China, including restrictions recently imposed by the West on the export of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China.
Neither China’s mission to the African Union nor its Ministry of Commerce responded to requests for comment.
Some African countries, such as Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Tanzania, have already implemented nationwide bans on donkey skin exports. However, porous borders and lax enforcement of fines have made curbing trade difficult.
For example, in West Africa, donkeys are trafficked from landlocked countries before being slaughtered in often horrific conditions in border areas with nations with access to the sea. The soles are then exported through cargo ports.
“Traffickers are looking for ways out, like ports, which we have to fight to keep closed,” said Vessaly Kallo, head of veterinary services in the West African coastal country of Ivory Coast.
In some countries where donkey skins are legal, they have also been used to smuggle protected items such as ivory, rhino horns or pangolin scales wrapped in the skins, according to research by the Donkey Sanctuary.
Governments have also faced pressure from donkey farmers who make significant profit from the donkey skin trade. Botswana banned exports of donkey products in 2017, but backtracked a year later as a result of intense lobbying by farmers and instead imposed export quotas.
Pressure to curb the donkey skin trade is growing elsewhere. As of December, Amazon no longer sells donkey meat and other dietary supplements containing ejiao to customers in California to comply with the state’s animal welfare laws.
U.S. Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, has repeatedly introduced a bill that would ban the production of ejiao and ban the sale and purchase of products with the ingredient.
In Africa, it is not yet clear how a continent-wide ban can help save donkeys: African states must now implement the ban through national legislation, a process that will take years. And national law enforcement agencies may not have the resources or the will to deal with the illegal trade in donkey skins.
Some African countries, such as Eritrea and South Africa, have long been reluctant to adopt a ban, arguing that they had the right to decide how to use their natural resources, said Mwenda Mbaka, a leading animal welfare expert from the Kenya and a member of the African Union Agency for Animal Resources.
But he said the dwindling number of donkeys has reached a crisis level.
Last September, Mr Mbaka took dozens of African diplomats on a two-day retreat to Kenya to raise awareness of animal abuse and the dangers that depleted donkey populations pose to rural households.
He showed the diplomats pictures of donkeys being illegally slaughtered in the bush and pointed out that without donkeys, some of the heavy work they do would likely fall to children or women.
It didn’t take long to win over his audience, Dr. Baca said. “Once they saw the evidence, they were on board.”
Lynsey Chutel contributed reporting from Johannesburg.