For years, Chinese companies and their contractors have slaughtered millions of donkeys across Africa to extract gelatin from the animals’ hides, which is used in China to make traditional medicines, popular sweets and beauty products.

But growing demand for gelatin has depleted donkey populations in African countries so alarmingly that governments are now taking action to curb the largely unregulated trade.

The African Union, an organization that includes the continent’s 55 nations, this month imposed a continent-wide ban on donkey hide exports in the hope that stocks will recover.

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

Donkeys only give birth to a foal every few years.

“An opportunity to survive in Africa is fueling Chinese middle-class demand for luxury products,” said Emmanuel Sarr, head of the West Africa regional office of Brooke, a London-based nongovernmental organization that works to protect donkeys and horses.

“It can not go on like this.”

China is the most important trading partner for many African countries. But in recent years his companies have come under increasing criticism for depleting the continent’s natural resources, from minerals to fish to donkey hides – an accusation once aimed primarily at Western countries.

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

Some Chinese companies or local middlemen buy and slaughter donkeys legally, but government officials have also shut down secret slaughterhouses.

Rural communities in some African countries have also reported increasing cases of donkey theft, although there is no estimate of how widespread the illegal trade has been.

According to Donkey Sanctuary, a British advocacy group, Ethiopia is home to the largest population of donkeys in Africa. During a research trip there in 2017, Dr. Johnston said many locals shared their anger at China “for killing our donkeys,” she said.

China’s donkey skin trade is the key part of a multi-billion 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 remain controversial among doctors and researchers in China.

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

Ejiao-based foods are very popular: pastries made from ejiao, walnuts, sesame and sugar have become a popular snack across China; A well-known tea drink brand has targeted young consumers with Ejiao milk tea.

Cathy Sha, a 30-year-old resident of Guangzhou, the commercial hub of southeastern China, said taking ejiao for months may have helped with recurring respiratory symptoms and cold sweats. Whatever the benefits, she said in text messages that she intends to continue consuming ejiao, a common practice among traditional Chinese medicine users.

China’s ejiao industry now consumes between four and six million donkey hides each year – about 10 percent of the world’s donkey population, according to figures Chinese news reports and estimates of the Donkey Sanctuary. China used to get Ejiao from donkeys in China. But their own herd has declined from more than nine million in 2000 to just over 1.7 million in 2022.

So in the last decade, China began turning to Africa, where 60 percent of the world’s donkeys live, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Donkeys are highly resilient to harsh climate conditions and can carry heavy loads for extended periods of time, making them a valuable resource in some areas of Africa. But unlike other four-legged mammals, they reproduce very slowly, and attempts to bring donkey breeding to an industrial level, including in China, have had limited success.

In some countries the decline was sudden and drastic. According to a study by Brooke, Kenya’s donkey population fell by half from 2009 to 2019. A third of Botswana’s donkeys have disappeared in recent years. Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and other countries also recorded sharp declines in their populations.

Beijing has been unusually quiet about the African Union’s ban on donkey hide exports, although it has criticized other measures to stop the flow of goods to China, including recent Western restrictions on the export of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China.

Neither China’s mission to the African Union nor its commerce ministry responded to requests for comment.

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

In West Africa, for example, donkeys are smuggled from landlocked countries before being slaughtered in often cruel conditions in areas bordering countries with access to the sea. The skins are then exported via freight ports.

“Traffickers are looking for ways out, like ports, which we have to fight to close,” 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, according to an investigation by Donkey Sanctuary.

Governments have also faced pressure from farmers who raise donkeys and make significant profits from the donkey skin trade. Botswana banned the export of donkey products in 2017, but backed down a year later due to intense lobbying from farmers and instead set export quotas.

Elsewhere, pressure is increasing to restrict the trade in donkey fur. Since December, Amazon has stopped selling donkey meat and other ejiao supplements to customers in California to comply with local animal welfare laws.

U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, has repeatedly suggested one The invoice This would ban the production of ejiao and ban the sale and purchase of products containing this ingredient.

In Africa, it is still unclear how the continent-wide ban could help save donkeys: African states must now implement the ban through national laws, a process that will take years. And national law enforcement agencies may not have the resources or will to combat the illegal trade in donkey fur.

Some African countries such as Eritrea and South Africa have long been reluctant to adopt a ban, arguing that they have the right to decide how to use their natural resources, said Mwenda Mbaka, a leading animal welfare expert from Kenya and a member of the African Union body for Animal resources.

But he said the declining number of donkeys had reached crisis levels.

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

He showed diplomats pictures of donkeys being illegally slaughtered in the bush, stressing that without donkeys some of the hard 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 to reporting from Johannesburg.

Audio produced by Jack D’Isidore.