As of recent, a string of East-African countries has been unusually subject to nature’s tyranny in the form of desert locusts.
Better known as the “Horn of Africa,” the peninsula’s latest plague of insects has been termed “one of the worst” in over half a century. Swarms of these pests supposedly migrated from Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya last week, jeopardizing the livelihood of many of the country’s inhabitants. Despite the general annoyance caused by the mere presence of these buzzing, whirling locusts, they also feed on both the produce to be sold in markets and the feed for grazing animals in the fields. As a result, families are slowly seeing their sources of income put more at risk by the day.
To put the image of a swarm in perspective, a single swarm can contain “up to 150 million locusts per square kilometer of farmland, an area the size of almost 250 football fields.” Their sizes are truly massive.
The fact that some East African countries, like Somalia and Ethiopia, already face their own glaring issues in various forms of civil unrest makes dealing with this issue harder than it already is at its core. Uganda and South Sudan are predicted to be subsequent victims, following Kenya.
This somewhat unprecedented surge of insect invasion may be spurred on by climate change. The insects thrive in wetter, warmer, and rain-heavy conditions, and 2019 was one of East Africa’s “wettest years on record.” Such rain hasn’t dissipated in certain parts of the region, inspiring more vegetation that the locusts can continually consume and use to increase their reproduction and general activity.
The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization has already begun taking steps to curb the large numbers of locust infestation, such as funding the aerial spraying of pesticides in relevant areas. One of Africa’s worst locust plagues occurred just under two decades ago, costing over a billion in losses for producers and farmers. Hopefully, the damage done can be contained before it gets much worse.
Darlon Riviere - Staff Writer