Unreported World
CHANNEL 4, 7.30PM
When news first started coming in about plagues of locusts in Kenya, social media was full of jokes about the imminent end of the world. Yet, as this report from Sahar Zand makes devastatingly clear, the reality is far bleaker than most of us can imagine with almost 1.3million people facing a plunge into poverty should the infestations take hold. Joining a group of “locust hunters”, that is people who cross the country trying desperately to prevent the spread, Zand’s cameras do a solid job of capturing the ferocity with which the insects devour crops.
The report deftly highlights how ordinary people’s livelihoods are affected, from the subsistence farmers desperately praying that their farm will be passed over by the swarming cloud to those convinced that the locusts are a punishment sent by God. That said, this is one of those rare Unreported
World episodes where you wish the reporter had been given the chance to dig a little deeper. Zand is repeatedly fobbed off by government officials vaguely claiming that measures are “being taken” and the question of why the locusts are arriving in such great numbers is unanswered.