African farmers’ woes pour from the skies: From heavy rainfall to desert locusts

The swarm of locusts that has invaded the Horn of Africa, raiding the crops, and pasture, now poses a danger to food production in the region. It could also raise the risk of human-wildlife conflict as animals could be forced to forage on farmlands that will have anything green left.

The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) announced this week that some 8.4 million people may need food relief this year in Ethiopia.

The majority of the vulnerable people are in Oromia, Ethiopia's largest region, the UNOCHA said in its latest Humanitarian Needs Overview of Ethiopia for 2020. About 2.4 million people, or 39 per cent of the total population, in Ethiopia’s Somali region are also projected to require humanitarian needs over the course of 2020, followed by Amhara region, with one million people.

Crop and pasture loss due to desert locust infestations in parts of Afar, Amhara and Tigray regions was taken into consideration when calculating the people in need of food assistance, it was noted.

In Ethiopia and Somalia, the desert locusts had destroyed more than 170,000 acres of crops and pasture land by December last year, one estimate by the Igad Centre for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development stated.

In Kenya, more than 200,000 hectares of pasture and crops land has been destroyed by the locusts in Mandera, Marsabit, Wajir, Isiolo, Meru and Samburu counties, local county agriculture officials estimated. By end of last week, the insects had, however, covered more than one million hectares of land in Kenya, threatening more crops and pasture in their wake, they added.

Image caption and source: Barely one month after floodwater destroyed crops, farmers have to contend with a locust infestation. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP