East Africa is still battling its worst locust invasion as the COVID-19 crisis continues to spread.
This would be an additional blow to food security in East African countries, which are also facing economic disruption from the coronavirus pandemic response.
In the region, swarms of desert locusts covered more than 2,000 square km – an area as big at Ethiopia’s Lake Tana – in April alone.
Swarms of this size are made up of billions of insects, which can obliterate vegetation, eating more in a day than the combined population of Kenya and Somalia do.
Ethiopia and Kenya are currently the worst hit by the locust infestation.
New waves of locusts are forecast for the coming months in Kenya, southern Ethiopia and Somalia as seasonal rains create favourable breeding conditions.
“The next generation of swarms will be around late June or early part of July,” says Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting officer at the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).
The timing is particularly worrying as this would coincide with the start of the harvest season.
It’s predicted more than 25 million people in East Africa will experience food insecurity in 2020 with the locust infestations compounding the situation.
To make matters worse, East Africa’s short rains, which normally fall from October to December, continued into 2020, allowing this first wave of swarms to mature and start laying eggs.
Now, the region has to fight this new generation as it hatches, before it creates the new swarms predicted for June.
Swarms of locusts are also ravaging Pakistan where the swarms are growing by the day.
This year’s locust infestation is a continuation of 2019’s outbreak in Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and South Asia, which is said to be the worst in decades.
As farmers described an unprecedented presence of the insatiable pests, the FAO warned of a serious infestation that can lead to a major threat to food security.
