Amid the still existing pandemic situation, East Africa is bracing for a third outbreak of desert locusts, with billions of the destructive insects about to hatch and threaten food supplies in a region already reeling from damaging rains.
Spurred by favorable weather conditions, the migratory pests have descended on East Africa in record numbers since late 2019 and another wave is about to take to the skies despite the concerted use of pesticides.
“Tens of thousands of hectares of cropland and pasture have already been damaged across the Horn and East Africa,” the International Rescue Committee said in a report this month, noting even a small swarm could devour the same amount of food in a day as approximately 35,000 people.
In Ethiopia between January and April, locusts destroyed 1.3 million hectares of grazing land and nearly 2,00,000 hectares of crops, resulting in the loss of 3,50,000 tons of cereals, IGAD, the East Africa regional organization, said in a June report.
But these initial estimates which corresponds to the first and second locust waves, do not fully capture the extent of damage as field surveys have been hindered by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Until we get extended figures, I would just say Ethiopia was definitely the most affected in terms of croplands, then Somalia,” says Kenneth Kemucie Mwangi from ICPAC, the climate monitoring program of IGAD.
Somalia, which like Kenya experienced heavy rains and flooding in recent months that left scores dead, had already declared a “national emergency” against the locust scourge in February.
So far East African neighbors Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi have been spared the insects, which travel in huge swarms billions of insects strong, and can migrate 150 kilometers (90 miles) in a single day.
The World Bank in May approved a $500 million (445 million euro) program to help countries vulnerable to hunger in East Africa fight the pests eating their way across the region.
Pesticide spraying operations have been underway since February, helping wipe out staggering numbers of the insects capable of multiplying their numbers 20-fold every three months.
“About 400,000 hectares were controlled in the region between January and mid May. We estimate that 400 billion locusts have been exterminated,” says Cyril Ferrand, a Nairobi-based expert with the FAO.
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