Despite a continent-wide ban, illegal trafficking of the beasts of burden continues to thrive in Africa, with local communities caught in the crossfire of Chinese demand for ejiao gelatin.

Amina (second name withheld) was 13 years old in 2013 when she first saw a group of agents – including Chinese and African nationals – seeking to buy donkey hides from her father at her family’s home in a suburb of Kano City in north-western Nigeria.

She recalls that the buyers then frequently came to buy donkeys in bulk and took them to unknown destinations or asked her father to slaughter them and strip off the animal’s skin. At the time, Amina did not know why they wanted the donkey hides.

By 2017, at 17, Amina was married off to a 52-year-old donkey trader from Jibia, a Nigerian border town in the northwest, near Niger, who also sold donkeys to local intermediaries linked with the Chinese cartels. In the same year, Nigeria and other African nations had begun to enforce national laws against the indiscriminate slaughter of donkeys for their hides.

In response, Chinese buyers tripled payments for donkey skins, driving prices from N15,000-N30,000 naira ($50-$110) to over N70,000 ($230). Recently, prices have fluctuated between N75,000 and N140,000 ($44-$82), according to five donkey owners and merchants across Nigeria’s northern communities, who have spent over two decades in the trade.

However, amid post-Covid animal welfare campaigns, the African Union (AU) imposed a continent-wide ban on donkey slaughters in February 2024. A year on, traders and experts say the ban has only driven the trade underground, fuelling violence and illegal sales.

“Donkey trafficking has turned brutal,” says Ibrahim Umar, a 60-year-old donkey trader in the outskirts of Niger’s capital Niamey. “Local intermediaries hurriedly kill stolen or bought donkeys with hammers,” he says. “Sometimes, they just brutally skin them alive in forests.”

The Chinese ejiao industry consumes an estimated 5.9 million donkey skins yearly, a requirement that has plummeted China’s donkey population by 80 per cent, down from 11 million in 1992 to two million in 2024, according to The Donkey Sanctuary, a UK donkey welfare group.

Ejiao, gelatin extracted from donkey skin, is an ancient traditional Chinese remedy used by people with anaemia, respiratory and reproductive issues, despite lacking medical evidence. The gelatin is also mixed with other ingredients to produce candy, pills and elixirs.

Sought mostly by the rich, the price of ejiao has surged 30 times in the past decade, rising from 100 yuan per 500g to 2,986 yuan ($420), according to the Chinese state media.

Around 2013, Chinese players in the ejiao industry, in search of donkey hides, turned to Africa – home to 33 million of the estimated 53 million donkeys in the global population. Concerns over the alarming decline in donkey numbers, the brutal slaughter of the animals, and the illegal trafficking of their hides prompted a continental ban.

Before the AU ban, Amina’s husband and other donkey traders in Jibia and neighbouring towns were still trading with Chinese intermediaries, despite a national ban. Jibia-based donkey merchant Abdorahman Quadri, 60, says that when the AU enforced its ban, they were initially unaware of it.

“When we eventually found out, the Chinese agents downplayed its existence for several weeks before acknowledging it,” he says.

The Africa Report spoke with six other donkey owners across parts of north-western and north-eastern Nigeria. They explained that once it became common knowledge that Chinese agents were willing to pay high prices for donkey hides, thefts across rural areas in these regions increased, with desperate locals selling to Chinese middlemen.

Emmanuel Sarr, the West Africa regional director of the international animal welfare group Brooke, argues that the illegal trade in donkey hides persists due to the high demand from the ejiao industry. “The situation is further exacerbated by weak enforcement and the vulnerability of local farmers,” he says.

A decade ago, when many African countries legalised the trade, the ejiao industry relied primarily on Chinese companies and local intermediaries, who either procured donkey hides from licensed abattoirs or purchased live animals directly from poor local communities across the continent.

“With the widespread national and recent continental bans, moving donkeys across borders has become risky because you never know who is really watching or who is genuinely working for a sincere government,” says Yerima Abdullahi, a donkey farmer in the Maradi region of Niger who has spent 24 years selling donkeys to West African merchants.

By mid-2024, Amina, her husband, and her father – who are based in Jibia – had stopped selling donkeys due to increased scrutiny by local donkey keepers and owners’ association, as well as a significant depletion of their herd. However, on some occasions, their stables have been violently raided by intermediaries who were once their regular buyers.

Five donkey owners – including two widows – from Nigeria’s north-western region and far northern Cameroon report that while donkey thefts have relatively increased, they are also witnessing more donkey carcasses in deep forests and mountainous areas. These accounts echo similar reports from Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa, where stolen donkeys are often found dead and skinned.

Donkey merchants note that the trend has become increasingly common since the enforcement of the February 2024 ban.

“Traffickers have simply resorted to skinning donkeys on site for easier mobility, selling the hides to Chinese cartels who are also linked to timber, ivory and wildlife smuggling,” says Abdullahi.

In Kousséri, a town in Cameroon’s Far North region near Chad, Moussa Abakar, a nomadic pastoralist, explains that no one keeps donkeys or their hides for long.

“Once the animals are skinned and salted, the Chinese buyers or their major local intermediaries quickly collect them from hidden strategic locations, often from makeshift collection points near borders or forests,” he says.

Last October, eight months after the ban had been imposed, the AU Commissioner for Agriculture, Josefa Sacko, issued a letter to member-states urging national governments to take swift action against the illegal donkey trade – a move experts say highlights the failure of the continental ban.

“The trade ban was imposed by a bloc that underestimates the scale of illegal trading,” says a Nigerian border official, speaking anonymously due to fear of reprisals.

“The African Union implemented a ban but surprisingly left enforcement in the hands of national authorities, many of whom are already struggling with border management and a growing smuggling crisis,” he adds.

“The demand for ejiao in China will continue to drive the industry’s value – and the traffickers’ determination,” he concludes.

Dong-E-E-Jiao, China’s leading ejiao producer, continues to face scrutiny for its role in the global donkey skin trade, particularly its impact on African donkey populations. It reported a 26.8 per cent revenue surge to $3.76 billion and 39 per cent net profit growth in the first half of 2024.

The AU, the Chinese Mission to the AU and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to The Africa Report’s multiple requests for comments. In some parts of rural Africa, owning a donkey – which does not breed easily or quickly – is a vital asset that shields impoverished families from extreme poverty.

“The loss of a donkey could mean that women and children must take on the strenuous work once done by the animal, affecting their daily survival,” says Lauren Johnston, an expert on China-Africa relations and a professor at the University of Sydney.

“The trafficking of donkeys for Chinese markets is essentially a clash between wealthy Chinese buyers and poor Africans, not the African elites, which is one of the reasons the ban has been slow to take effect,” Johnston adds.

Amid limited resources for data tracking and weak regulatory enforcement, records of African donkey hides exported to China remain unavailable. The Nigerian government did not respond to requests for comment. For Amina, watching her husband and father shift from the illegal trade to lawful cattle rearing and crop farming felt like a personal victory.

“Donkey slaughters may still be happening elsewhere,” she says, “but I don’t want to see my loved ones involved in illegal trading.”

• A Tell Media report / Republished from The Africa Report