Abstract/Summary

Donkeys provide important benefits for millions of people worldwide. Donkeys are under-researched in comparison to other species due to their negative representation in worldwide cultures and status as a poverty-indicator. The global donkey population is under pressure from growing demand for a Traditional Chinese Medicine made from donkey-skin. The complexities of donkeys’ value, determined using an economic anthropology focus, is changing rapidly in response to these new international forces. How donkeys underpin rural livelihood outcomes was evaluated through qualitative thematic analysis with 262 participants in northern Ghana. Uniquely, boys and girls between the ages of 10–16-years old were also interviewed. Donkeys’ contributions to traditional rural livelihoods are significant and more complex than previously documented in the literature. Donkeys are highly valued by their owners, not only for their economic utility in providing a pathway out of ultra-poverty, but also for their socio-economic values in helping reduce drudgery and save time: enabling children to spend some of this time on schoolwork. Changing social norms are empowering girls especially, to negotiate fees and payments for hiring out the family donkey for male-orientated chores, thus gaining increasing agency and autonomy over their own finances. The increasing focus on donkeys’ material products - meat and hides - is underpinning the rising use and exchange-values of donkeys, making donkeys unaffordable to many who express an interest in owning them. As a result, regional donkey populations are threatened and the discourse around donkeys is currently being re-framed. Since ~2017, donkeys are being promoted as an important economic solution to poverty through improving livelihoods. This non-decolonized, post-development narrative risks using poor people purely as vehicles to frame development achievements, largely renders donkey owners voiceless, and diverts attention from the iniquitous use of donkeys into the 21st century, a critical reflection on the global economy.