Officials fear locust onslaught in Africa

Governments and U.N. agencies have repeatedly warned that locusts will cause calamitous food shortages in Africa if they end up on cropland. “It is a race against time to ensure these new swarms do not breed,” said Hamisi Williams, a senior Food and Agriculture Organization official in Kenya. “When this happens, we will be talking about the locusts at plague level.”

Tens of thousands of liters of pesticides have been delayed in reaching the region because of border closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Luck, in the form of favorable winds, has so far been on the farmers’ side, and the swarms have mostly been pointed toward the vast open ranges of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. But with tens of millions of people in the wider region already dependent on food aid, a humanitarian crisis, or even famine, could happen quickly.

Regional governments have requested aid, but the coronavirus pandemic has pushed locusts down the priority list.