The Horn of Africa is still plagued by thick swarms of hungry locusts. The insect invasion has been declared a "national emergency" in Somalia, the Somali Ministry of Agriculture announced on Sunday. Locusts are devastating the food supply in one of the poorest and most vulnerable regions of the world.
"The Ministry of Agriculture [...] declares a national emergency due to the current upsurge of locusts, which pose a major threat to the fragile food security situation in Somalia," he said in a statement. .
An invasion linked to climatic variations
Somalia is the first country in the region to mobilize nationally to combat hungry locust swarms.
These swarms of historic magnitude, totaling several billion insects, have been devastating large areas of East Africa for several weeks. This invasion follows extreme climatic variations which could prove catastrophic for a region already hit by drought and floods.
"Food sources for people and their livestock are threatened," added the Somali Ministry of Agriculture, while swarms of locusts consume huge amounts of crops and fodder.
Endangered crops
The Somali government said it had made the decision to focus efforts and raise funds, as it is essential to try to contain the locust swarms before the harvest is scheduled for April.
Thick clouds of hungry locusts spread from Ethiopia and Somalia to Kenya, where the United Nations Food and Agriculture Agency (FAO) estimated in late January that only one of these swarms covered an area of 2,400 km2, the size of Luxembourg.