Kenya faces new swarms of Desert Locusts

Kenya, a man in a cloud of locusts that invaded his field, near Nanyuki (Laikipia county).

February 2020 REUTERS / Baz Ratner

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

In addition to the Covid-19, it is a new wave of locusts that has been hitting the Horn of Africa for several weeks.

Extremely voracious, these locusts have devoured hectares of crops in the region for over a year, causing a major food crisis.

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With our correspondent in Nairobi,

Coming from Yemen and Somalia, they invaded in particular Ethiopia and the northern half of Kenya.

Some swarms are now moving further south, warns the FAO, the UN food and agriculture organization.

Dark clouds of billions of billions of locusts move across the Horn of Africa, traveling up to 150 kilometers per day.

They are now found in southern Kenya, in Taita Taveta County, on the Tanzanian border.

According to the FAO, they could appear this weekend in northeastern Tanzania, especially in the Kilimanjaro region.

However, their progress should be slowed down, thanks to a change in wind direction in the coming days.

Meanwhile, this new generation of desert locusts has already laid eggs in southern Somalia and a risk of egg laying is feared in the sandy areas of northeastern Kenya, causing new swarms to form by early December.

The Kenyan authorities and the FAO are continuing control operations, in particular through the spreading of insecticide, the only way to overcome it.

But locusts breed extremely quickly.

A female lays a hundred eggs on her own on average.

They can thus multiply by 20 every three months.

► Read also: Desert locusts continue to wreak havoc in East Africa

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