African Union cracks down on donkey harvesting, skin exports
DAKAR, Senegal — For years, Chinese companies and their contractors have been slaughtering millions of donkeys across Africa, coveting gelatin from the animals’ hides that is processed into traditional medicines, popular sweets and beauty products in China.
But a growing demand for the gelatin has decimated donkey populations at such alarming rates in African countries that governments are now moving to put a brake on the mostly unregulated trade.
The African Union, a body that encompasses the continent’s 55 states, adopted a continentwide ban on donkey skin exports this month in the hope that stocks will recover.
Rural households across Africa rely on donkeys for transportation and agriculture.
Yet donkeys only breed a foal every couple of years.
“A means of survival in Africa fuels the demand for luxury products from the middle class in China,” said Emmanuel Sarr, who heads the West Africa regional office of Brooke, a nongovernment organization based in London that works to protect donkeys and horses.
“This cannot continue.”
China is the main trading partner for many African countries. But in recent years its companies have been increasingly criticized for depleting the continent’s natural resources, from minerals to fish and now donkey skins, a censure once largely aimed at Western countries.
“This trade is undermining the 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 intermediaries buy and slaughter donkeys legally, but government officials have also dismantled clandestine slaughterhouses.
Rural communities in some African countries have also reported increasing cases of donkey theft, although there is no estimate of how widespread illegal trafficking has been.
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, Johnston said that many locals had shared their anger at China, “because they’re killing our donkeys,” she recounted.
China’s donkey skin trade is the key component of a multibillion-dollar industry for what the Chinese call ejiao, or donkey gelatin. It is a traditional medicine recognized by China’s health authorities, but whose actual benefits remain debated among doctors and researchers in China.
China’s ejiao industry now consumes between 4 million and 6 million donkey hides every year — about 10% of the world’s donkey population, according to Chinese news reports and estimates by the Donkey Sanctuary. China used to source ejiao from donkeys in China. But its own herd has plummeted from more than 9 million in 2000 to just over 1.7 million in 2022.