African donkeys are coveted by China. Can the continent protect them?

For years, Chinese companies and their contractors have slaughtered millions of donkeys across Africa in search of gelatin from the animal skins that are processed in China into traditional medicines, popular sweets and beauty products.

But a growing demand for the gelatin has decimated donkey populations in African countries to such an alarming degree that governments are now taking action to put a brake on the largely unregulated trade.

The African Union, a body that includes the continent’s 55 states, this month adopted a continental ban on the export of donkey skins, hoping supplies will recover.

Rural households across Africa rely on donkeys for transportation and farming.

Yet donkeys only breed a foal every few years.

“A means of survival in Africa is fueling middle-class luxury demand in China,” said Emmanuel Sarr, head of the West African regional office of Brooke, a London-based nongovernmental organization dedicated to protecting donkeys and horses.

“This cannot continue.”

China is the most important trading partner for many African countries. But in recent years the companies have increasingly been criticized for depleting the continent’s natural resources, from minerals to fish and now donkey skins, a condemnation that was once mainly aimed at Western countries.

“This trade undermines mutual development talks between China and African countries,” said Lauren Johnston, an expert on China-Africa relations and associate professor at the University of Sydney.

Some Chinese companies or local middlemen 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 the widespread illegal trade.

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 are killing our donkeys,” she said.

China’s donkey skin trade is the centerpiece of a multibillion-dollar industry for what the Chinese call ejiao, or donkey gelatin. It is a traditional medicine recognized by Chinese health authorities, but its actual benefits are still debated among doctors and researchers in China.

In recent years, what was once a luxury product has become increasingly mainstream as incomes among China’s middle and upper classes have risen. Traditional Chinese medicine marketers and health food companies have marketed ejiao (pronounced UH-jee-ow in Mandarin) as offering potential benefits for people with circulatory, gynecological or respiratory problems.

Ejiao-based food products are flourishing: pastries made with ejiao, walnuts, sesame and sugar have become a popular snack throughout China; a well-known tea drink brand targets young consumers with ejiao milk tea.

Cathy Sha, a 30-year-old resident of Guangzhou, southeast China’s commercial hub, said months of using ejiao may have helped with recurring breathing problems and cold sweats. Whatever the benefits, she said in text messages that she 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 every year – about 10 percent of the world’s donkey population, according to figures Chinese news reports and Donkey Sanctuary estimates. China used to get 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 over the past decade, China has focused on Africa, where 60 percent of the world’s donkeys live, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Donkeys are highly resistant to harsh climatic conditions and can carry heavy loads for extended periods of time, making them a valued resource in some areas of Africa. But unlike other four-legged mammals, they are very slow to reproduce and attempts to take donkey farming to an industrial level, including in China, have had limited success.

In some countries the decline has been sudden and sharp. According to Brooke’s research, Kenya’s donkey population decreased by half between 2009 and 2019. A third of Botswana’s donkeys have disappeared in recent years. Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and other countries have also seen their stocks decline rapidly.

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 recently imposed Western restrictions on the export of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China.

Neither the Chinese Mission to the African Union nor the Commerce Ministry responded to requests for comment.

Some African countries, such as Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Tanzania, have already introduced a nationwide ban on the export of donkey skins. But porous borders and lax enforcement of fines have made it difficult to curb the trade.

In West Africa, for example, donkeys are traded from landlocked countries before being slaughtered under often horrific conditions in border areas with countries with access to the sea. The pelts are then exported via cargo ports.

“Traffickers look for exits, such as ports, that 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 are also used to smuggle protected items such as elephant ivory, rhino horns or pangolin scales wrapped in the skins, a Donkey Sanctuary study shows.

Governments have also faced pressure from donkey-breeding farmers who make significant profits from the donkey skin trade. Botswana banned the export of donkey products in 2017, but reversed itself a year later due to intense lobbying by farmers and imposed export quotas instead.

Pressure to restrict the trade in donkey skins is increasing elsewhere. Since December, Amazon has stopped selling donkey meat and other dietary supplements containing ejiao to customers in California to comply with that state’s animal welfare law.

U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, has repeatedly account that would ban the production of ejiao and ban the sale and purchase of products containing that ingredient.

In Africa, it is still unclear how the continental ban will help save the 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 will to tackle the illegal trade in donkey skins.

Some African countries, such as Eritrea and South Africa, have long been reluctant to embrace a ban, arguing that they had the right to decide how to use their natural resources, says Mwenda Mbaka, a leading animal welfare expert from Kenya and Member of the African Union Animal Resources Body.

But he said the dwindling number of donkeys has reached crisis levels.

Last September, Mr. Mbaka took dozens of African diplomats on a two-day retreat in Kenya to raise awareness of animal cruelty and the dangers that depleted donkey populations pose to rural households.

He showed the diplomats images of donkeys being illegally slaughtered in the bush and emphasized that without donkeys, some of the heavy work they do would likely fall on children or women.

It didn’t take long to convince his audience, said Dr. Mbaka. “When they saw the evidence, they were on board.”

Lynsey Chutel contributed reporting from Johannesburg.