An overshadowed challenge

Africa faces growing hunger following droughts, locust attacks

ABOUT 16 countries in Africa are staring at the worst food insecurity in decades as drought continues to grip the region for third consecutive year and swarms of desert locusts have taken over farms. These countries include Somalia, Haiti, South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, Congo and Burundi.

The rainy season across southern Africa in 2018-19 was one of the driest on record in past 40 years. In Zimbabwe, the government is struggling to provide water and food to about

8 million people comprising about half of the country’s population. The country’s southern and northwestern regions are the worst hit. In the backdrop of foreign currency deficits and plummeting value of the Zimbabwean currency, the country is also struggling to access grains from the international market. To tide over the crisis, the government has recently lifted its ban on genetically modified corn.

In Namibia, about 350,000 people are threatened by hunger. Most areas are suffering from water shortages as reserves remain dry. The government says the country faces a faminelike situation and has sought intervention of the World Food Programme (wfp). In Madagascar, the Food and Agriculture Organization (fao) warns that food reserves are almost exhausted and some half a million people are in a nutritional crisis.

Countries in eastern Africa, on the other hand, received exceptionally heavy precipitation— highest in the past 40 years— during last rainy season. But the unusually wet conditions turned the environment conducive for the severe outbreak of desert locusts, causing an “unprecedented threat to food security and livelihood” in at least nine countries, says fao. Kenya suffered its worst locust infestation in 70 years.

As fao warns that the number of locusts in east Africa could increase 500 times by June, the fight against locusts has been hit by a shortage of pesticides following the suspension of flights worldwide in the wake of covid-19 pandemic.