A Chinese Medicine's Popularity Drove Up Donkey Prices In Africa

The market for ejiao was until recently mainly medicinal. My book details the very recent – and stunning – commercialisation of ejiao and its transformation into an array of products, from cakes and drinks to cosmetics and other wellness products.

There is also demand for it in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US, Europe, Australia and south-east Asia.

Africa is home to the world's largest donkey population. As the ejiao industry began to run short of donkey hides from around 2010, the continent became a target of the supply chain, both legal and illicit. Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania were among earlier targets, given both their donkey supplies and closer geography to China. But demand for donkey hides – and the returns – grew to be so great that essentially no donkey in Africa was safe.

One donkey hide can fetch over US$400 in China.

Donkeys have been working animals in Africa for eons. The market is largely informal. Given the price their hide can achieve, donkeys are being sold even though their work is vital. Added to this, the slow breeding rate of the donkey is affecting supply. The cycle presents a compounding extinction risk.

Porous and remote borders, different regulations and patchy application of regulation has made stemming the trade almost impossible. My book elaborates on Tanzania's experience. The country gave up trying to secure a continent-wide formal agreement to halt the trade. This was after its frustrations with donkey smuggling across the Kenyan border especially, its failure to regulate slaughter numbers and standards, and a failure to develop sufficient breeding programmes.

The first Pan-African Donkey Conference in 2022 included representatives from the African Union InterAfrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), the government of Tanzania and other government representatives from across the continent, alongside donkey welfare charities, think-tanks and academia.

The outcome of the event was the Dar es Salaam Declaration, which called for a 15-year continental moratorium on the slaughter of donkeys for their hides. The February 2024 37th African Union Summit would back their call and agree to that moratorium. This was an historic moment for the protection of African biodiversity and the rural poor, women especially.

But implementation has been imperfect as it requires each member country's laws to be changed and those laws to be implemented consistently. Progress is underway, but far from enough to save the donkey, let alone the welfare of communities who rely on their work for physical and economic mobility.

Banning trade can send it underground and across borders, too. South Africa's limits sent supply through Lesotho, where abattoir standards are lower.

Firstly, because supply can't keep up with demand.

Current demand for ejiao requires four to five million hides a year, far more than China's donkey stock can supply. Donkeys are notoriously slow breeders. The gap has been filled by a poorly regulated trade drawing mainly on Africa, which holds about two-thirds of the world's donkeys.