Animal Welfare League Applauds Decision by African Heads of States to Ban Donkey Skin Trade
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Over 5 million donkeys are slaughtered in Africa each year as a result of increasing foreign demand for donkey skins. In the past ten years, Africa has experienced a significant decline in its donkey population, primarily attributed to the rising demand from China for ejiao, a gelatin derived from boiling donkey skins and used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Despite its purported but unverified health advantages, the demand for ejiao has reduced China's donkey population drastically, resulting in the expansion of export markets in other regions, particularly Africa and South America.
This is why the Animal Welfare League applauds the African Union Heads of State who, during their gathering in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the 37th Ordinary Session of the African Union Assembly, successfully placed a ban on Donkey skin trade following the proposal that was made by the Specialised Technical Committee for Agriculture, Rural Development, Water, and Environment in November, 2023.
About two-thirds of the world’s 50 million donkey population lives in Africa, making this ban momentous. The 15-year ban on donkey slaughter and skin export in Africa is perhaps the most encouraging news since countries like Ghana started banning the practice in 2017 and Kenya in 2020. There have been efforts to raise awareness of the declining population of donkeys in African countries by several organisations, including Animal Welfare League’s article “Ghana Could be Without Donkeys Soon”, Donkeys in Africa Now and In The Future, produced by the African Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) with support from Brooke, and Donkey Sanctuary’s recent highlight of donkey slaughters in Africa.
We expect other bans to follow suit from large consumer countries of the Chinese traditional medicine ejiao, such as the United States and Europe. There already is a bill in Congress in the United States called the Ejiao Act, which intends to ban the sale and importation of Chinese medicine and could be key in the fight against Donkey slaughter.
