Currently, Africa is waging a two-front war- against the COVID 19 and Locust attacks. The Locust infestation in Africa that started since June 2019, has continued through 2020, presenting an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa. The locusts descended on more than twenty countries in Africa and proliferated 500 times over the months. The East African countries maintain that they have not faced a locust threat of this magnitude in 70 years.
Agriculture scientists have proved that there is a definite link between climate change and the unprecedented locust crisis plaguing Ethiopia and East Africa. Arid zones when cooled with showers offer a perfect breeding ground for desert locusts. The current infestation originated on the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen when in 2018 and 2019, a series of cyclones linked to unusually warm seas in the Indian Ocean soaked the sandy desert in the Arabian Peninsula. A locust boom followed. A single swarm of desert locusts -a voracious grasshopper species -can spread over 460-square miles of land. A swarm can consume in a day grains and plants, which can feed thousands of people, virtuallydenuding the land of crops. Is it a paradox that such doomsday predictions of locusts from Biblical times still continue into the modern era, which swears by state-of-the-art technology? Have we progressed in containing locust? Even today, what scientist is capable of is predicting where the swarms will form before they
proliferate into millions destroying vast tracts of crops, which are often rural people’s sustenance. Evidence suggests that remedial measures continue to be the same as several decades ago. The strategy is still to spray millions of litres of chemical pesticides on the insects, over thousands of hectares of land contaminating the environment and human health.
It is also true that identifying exactly where the locusts start to swarm can be enormously daunting, especially when it comes to desert locusts in Africa, which naturally inhabit remote terrains some 16 million square kilometres in size. The creatures usually lead solitary lives. But in right environmental conditions align after a good rainy season, undergoes a behavioral change and transform into a formidable swarm. Though there is unanimous agreement about the need to fight the locust attacks,
there is an overarching view that humanity shouldn’t endeavor to completely wipe out locust swarms. After all, locust swarms are wild, natural phenomena. Attempting to eliminate the insects, they feel could have unforeseen, cascading environmental consequences.
There may be pertinent in telling that the environmental benefits of the locust swarms are yet to be discerned. But the deleterious impact they can cause is well documented and quantified. That calls for increased assistance to the locust affected regions to make good what they have lost due to the recurring attacks, even if there is a time lag, stretching over decades. Once that happens food security becomes a major casualty, particularly in a continent known for its food shortages. Does it mean the UN assistance towards locust attack has to go up both in kind and cash? Since the loss in food production will have a cascading effect on the people in the region for quite some time, particularly rural poor, there has to be more liberal assistance to make good the losses.
Biologists say locusts are cannibalistic and they start eating each other once they are short of food. Should we invest more in research
on the grasshopper so as to modulate their proliferation to minimize food losses since the poor will have to bear the brunt of the
locust attack? It is a wakeup call for Agricultural Research Institutions in Africa to come together to develop a road map and counter the threat. AU and AFDB should earmark funds and support African research institutions to find solutions to this recurring menace. Africa can draw a lesson from this power of locusts to act as a unified indomitable force and join hands to fight the challenge.
