The Guardian view on China, Africa and disappearing donkeys: an unexpected crisis offers a clue to perils ahead
What can help to protect women's health, boost the incomes of impoverished families and thus allow girls to avoid early marriage? What – when it disappears – can set back children's education, damage mental wellbeing, drive conflict within communities and become a vector for racial hatred?
The humble donkey has rarely been in the spotlight. Yet Chinese demand for its skin proved so destabilising that African governments agreed to a continent-wide ban on the slaughter of the animal for its hide last year. This week, officials are meeting in Ivory Coast to discuss implementation.
A recent paper by Dr Lauren Johnston of the University of Sydney outlines the extraordinary rise and fall of the Sino-African trade in donkey skins, and its repercussions. Ejiao – donkey hide gelatine – was first developed around 3,000 years ago and is used in traditional Chinese medicine, and more recently in beauty products. Longstanding demand was supercharged by growing prosperity and media influence, reportedly surging after characters in a popular Chinese TV period drama, Empresses in the Palace, were shown taking it. But while production of ejiao had been industrialised, a problem soon emerged: donkeys are notably hard to breed. Ejiao consumption equates to 4m to 5m hides per year, equivalent to almost a tenth of the global donkey population. China's stock of animals plummeted from 11 million in the early 1990s to just 2 million – and attention turned to African hides.
The continent is home to almost two-thirds of the world's 53 million donkeys. Their use as beasts of burden there dates back even further than the invention of ejiao; owners describe them as priceless. Despite governments' attempts to regulate the trade in hides, there were repeated complaints not only of inhumane treatment but also crime; on one estimate, as many as a third of the exported hides were stolen. Families woke to find their animals had vanished, or been slaughtered and skinned on the spot.
Many could not afford to replace them, because the price of new animals had soared. Without the creatures, women are often forced to carry heavy loads of firewood or water; children may be kept home to help with chores; families can no longer rent donkeys to neighbours, reducing their incomes. Former owners reported reduced wellbeing and increased stress. Some suspected their neighbours of stealing their donkeys, and in South Africa, online posts about Chinese gangs involved in the illicit trade attracted comments inciting racial hatred. The African Union ban may tackle some of these problems. But it may also be shifting them. In Pakistan, the price of the animals has rocketed.
The case of the missing donkeys may sound like a niche concern but is really a particular instance of a pressing global issue. Oil and minerals may get the attention, but growing competition for resources – driven by increasing prosperity in economies such as China and India and the pace of consumer culture – can pop up in unexpected areas, hit the poorest hardest and create new diplomatic, social and economic tensions. Addressing such cases will take not only determination but ingenuity and a willingness to work with unlikely allies: Africa's ban was driven by a coalition of farmers, animal rights campaigners, economists, gender activists, religious leaders and others. It will also need to be done at speed. The donkey shock is not a one-off, but a warning of other potential flashpoints ahead.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
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The Guardian
2 days ago
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The Guardian view on China, Africa and disappearing donkeys: an unexpected crisis offers a clue to perils ahead
What can help to protect women's health, boost the incomes of impoverished families and thus allow girls to avoid early marriage? What – when it disappears – can set back children's education, damage mental wellbeing, drive conflict within communities and become a vector for racial hatred? The humble donkey has rarely been in the spotlight. Yet Chinese demand for its skin proved so destabilising that African governments agreed to a continent-wide ban on the slaughter of the animal for its hide last year. This week, officials are meeting in Ivory Coast to discuss implementation. A recent paper by Dr Lauren Johnston of the University of Sydney outlines the extraordinary rise and fall of the Sino-African trade in donkey skins, and its repercussions. Ejiao – donkey hide gelatine – was first developed around 3,000 years ago and is used in traditional Chinese medicine, and more recently in beauty products. Longstanding demand was supercharged by growing prosperity and media influence, reportedly surging after characters in a popular Chinese TV period drama, Empresses in the Palace, were shown taking it. But while production of ejiao had been industrialised, a problem soon emerged: donkeys are notably hard to breed. Ejiao consumption equates to 4m to 5m hides per year, equivalent to almost a tenth of the global donkey population. China's stock of animals plummeted from 11 million in the early 1990s to just 2 million – and attention turned to African hides. The continent is home to almost two-thirds of the world's 53 million donkeys. Their use as beasts of burden there dates back even further than the invention of ejiao; owners describe them as priceless. Despite governments' attempts to regulate the trade in hides, there were repeated complaints not only of inhumane treatment but also crime; on one estimate, as many as a third of the exported hides were stolen. Families woke to find their animals had vanished, or been slaughtered and skinned on the spot. Many could not afford to replace them, because the price of new animals had soared. Without the creatures, women are often forced to carry heavy loads of firewood or water; children may be kept home to help with chores; families can no longer rent donkeys to neighbours, reducing their incomes. Former owners reported reduced wellbeing and increased stress. Some suspected their neighbours of stealing their donkeys, and in South Africa, online posts about Chinese gangs involved in the illicit trade attracted comments inciting racial hatred. The African Union ban may tackle some of these problems. But it may also be shifting them. In Pakistan, the price of the animals has rocketed. The case of the missing donkeys may sound like a niche concern but is really a particular instance of a pressing global issue. Oil and minerals may get the attention, but growing competition for resources – driven by increasing prosperity in economies such as China and India and the pace of consumer culture – can pop up in unexpected areas, hit the poorest hardest and create new diplomatic, social and economic tensions. Addressing such cases will take not only determination but ingenuity and a willingness to work with unlikely allies: Africa's ban was driven by a coalition of farmers, animal rights campaigners, economists, gender activists, religious leaders and others. It will also need to be done at speed. The donkey shock is not a one-off, but a warning of other potential flashpoints ahead. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
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The flimsy barbed-wire fence around the homestead can barely keep out the hungry predators, which have been responsible for the loss of 10 sheep and three cows. 'Look at the black one,' she says, pointing to one of her cows, which survived an attack about two weeks ago. 'I don't know how long she will survive in that condition.' The lions lie in wait for the opportune time to strike. As we drive along a narrow dirt road near one of the homesteads, we freeze as our guide points to the shade of an acacia bush less than 10 metres away, where a lioness lies motionless, her amber eyes fixed on us. Before the turn of the last century, rangelands south of Nairobi, including the present-day Amboseli national park, were all interconnected, providing enough room for wild animals to roam. 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But the residents are willing to tolerate this uneasy coexistence by leaving the remaining corridors open and giving up economic activities that are not in line with wildlife conservation, such as crop farming or keeping large herds of livestock, if both government and wildlife conservation organisations ramp up compensation processes for their losses while compensating them financially for protecting biodiversity. With 65-75% of wild animals in Kenya living outside conservation areas, the government relies on private landowners to host and protect wildlife. It is reviewing wildlife laws to entrench a more community-led approach to conservation. Silvia Museiya, from the state department for wildlife, says: 'If people see no benefits of hosting wildlife on their land, they will convert [the land] to other uses.' In April 2025, 256 landowners, including those adjacent to Nairobi national park, Amboseli and Masai Mara, more than 100 miles away, received $175,000 (£129,000), the first of a biannual payment earned from a pilot programme that pays landowners to keep more than 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres) open and intact. Each landowner will be paid $5 an acre each year, a modest amount that locals hope will increase as more join the programme and it attracts more finance. 'I got 6,000 shillings [£34] for my 20 acres of grassland,' says 35-year-old Daniel Parsaurei. 'The amount is not much but … if we open up the land, we can all have enough grazing areas and help increase the wild animals so that lions can also have enough food and reduce attacks on cattle.' The programme uses remote-sensing technologies developed by Andrew Davies at Harvard University to measure the extent of biodiversity within a given region and create 'biodiversity credits' to sell for its protection. Proponents of this programme say it is a more direct and immediate form of nature financing, to incentivise the individuals who directly protect such biodiversity every day. Viraj Sikand, co-founder of EarthAcre, a local startup that finds funders for biodiversity and monitors how such capital reaches local communities, says: 'Unless such payments are delivered directly to landowners, all the land will go.' According to Ogutu, without stakeholders restoring prey populations outside the park and reconnecting roaming routes, predators will remain both 'victims and villains in a drama of our own making'. 'The choice is stark,' he says, 'feed lions with functioning ecosystems, or watch them feed on livestock until neither can be sustained.'
