China in Africa: No donkey could be left in Kenya in five years

Chinese companies are making billions of dollars by stealing donkey’s from poor Africans. They are slaughtered in huge numbers. So much are actually getting slaughtered that scientist expect no donkey could be left in Kenya in 5 years. China is slaughtering all donkey’s in Kenya as we speak. Chinese companies like DEEJ are making millions at the cost of poor Africans.

Dawn was just beginning to break when Joseph Kamonjo Kariuki woke to find his donkeys missing.

The villager searched the bush frantically for the animals he depends on to deliver water for a living. But they were nowhere to be found.

It was the village’s children who led Kariuki to the ghastly remains. Three bloody, severed donkey heads lying on the ground. “I was in shock,” said Kariuki, who is known in his Kenyan village of Naivasha as “Jose wa Mapunda”. “Joseph of the Donkeys” in Swahili.

The latest victims of a black market for donkey skins

Kariuki believes his donkeys were the latest victims of a black market for donkey skins. These skins are a key ingredient in a Chinese health fad.

Which is threatening the beasts of burden many Africans rely on for farm work and transporting loads.

From Kenya to Burkina Faso, Egypt to Nigeria, agents are seeking to feed China’s insatiable appetite for a gelatin they call ejiao. A product made from stewed donkey skins that purports to provide health benefits.

Shrinking donkey herds in China have driven ejiao producers to seek out donkey skins from Africa. But also from Australia and South America. This is threatening the world’s donkey population and driving violent crime and protests across Africa, the activists say.

Kariuki founded a protest group “Tunza Punda Wako” or “Take Care of Your Donkey” in Swahili. They’ve picketed the abattoir in Naivasha, accusing it of driving the skin thefts.

Fourteen African governments have banned the export of donkey skins, according to the U.K.-based animal welfare group Donkey Sanctuary.

Butchering 1,000 donkeys a day

In Kenya, the donkey population has fallen in the past nine years by a third, from 1.8 million to 1.2 million. Kenya’s three licensed slaughterhouses butcher 1,000 donkeys a day to supply skins to China, said Calvin Onyango, program development manager of the Donkey Sanctuary Kenya.

“We do not have many donkeys and most people do not want to sell their donkeys. So to keep supplying these slaughterhouses, we have ended up with businesspeople or brokers stealing other people’s donkeys to supply the slaughterhouses,” Onyango said.

At the rate at which donkeys were being slaughtered meant that there could be none left in five years.