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A swarm of desert locusts in Kipsing, near Oldonyiro, Isiolo County, Kenya. The current situation in East Africa continues to be extremely alarming as hopper bands and an increasing number of new swarms form in Kenya, southern Ethiopia and Somalia. © FAO / Sven Torfinn, used with permission.
COVID-19, desert locusts or torrential rains and floods: where should East Africa focus its attention among this “triple threat”?
As the rains coincide with the planting season across the region amid various coronavirus restrictions, this question, while rhetorical, is on the minds of many people.
On April 22, journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo raised this particular controversy on Twitter:
# covid19africa, torrential rains and murderer # floods/Climate change; and # lobsters in East Africa. If we had to fight only one, what should it be? Which will kill us less? #EastAfricanDilemma
– Charles Onyango-Obbo (@ cobbo3) April 22, 2020
Of the 779 respondents to the Onyango-Obbo poll, 45 percent said East Africans should focus on fighting the coronavirus. Cases have skyrocketed across the continent during the month of April, changing lives due to various preventive measures, such as blockades and travel bans, that have essentially halted economies and markets.
But the locust plague in the Horn and East Africa posed a threat to food security long before the coronavirus changed the global focus, and 33 percent of respondents said locusts pose a more serious threat to African lives. than the coronavirus itself. And 22 percent said that torrential rains and floods, largely attributed to rapid climate change across the continent, should be the priority. Severe floods have wiped out crops, fueled rising food prices and sent residents to “fight for survival” from Somalia to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The truth is that this trifecta crisis (the virus, the locusts and the floods) is not mutually exclusive. In fact, each one is inextricably linked.
Second wave lobsters
Locusts, which mainly affect central Kenya, southern Ethiopia and Somalia, at the moment, are the result of “an unusually humid climate in the past 18 months that created perfect breeding conditions,” according to Bloomberg.
The largest locust outbreak in 70 years occurred in January 2020 among various East African nations, destroying more than 25 million hectares of crops. Now, experts say the second wave of lobsters hatched from the offspring of the first one could be 20 times larger, and more threatening, than the first wave.
Desert locust swarms fly in northeastern Kenya. Voracious swarms threaten the entire East African subregion, March 31, 2020, Kipsing, near Oldonyiro, Isiolo County, Kenya. © FAO / Sven Torfinn, used with permission.
“The coronavirus could kill, but hunger kills many more people,” said Akinwumi A. Adesina, president of the African Development Bank. Adesina wrote that desert locusts can “consume crops in one day that can feed approximately 35,000 people,” and in East Africa, where approximately 20 million people are already food insecure, the effects could be devastating.
Taming locusts has required a large amount of pesticides, and political will. But with the second wave of “LOCUST-19” imminent, East African nations have focused their attention on tackling COVID-19, implementing travel restrictions that directly impede the ability to mitigate locust swarms that can travel up to 150 kilometers in 24 hours, eating food intended for humans. Analysts say this means that many farmers will likely not see a harvest in June.
Donors pledged or provided $ 153 million through the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to help governments buy pesticides, helicopters and other essential materials necessary to combat the second locust outbreak, but “supplies purchased by the agency did not begin arriving until mid-March when a second generation of the voracious insects began to hatch,” according to The New Humanitarian.
Officers of the National Youth Service observe some desert locust as part of a biology lesson during training on desert locust control at the Kenya National Youth Service Training College in Gilgil, Kenya, February 13, 2020. © FAO / Luis Tato, used with permission.
Underwater towns
The maddening buzz of locusts is the song of climate change.
“This particular outbreak began with heavy rains from two cyclones in May and October 2018 that hit the southern Arabian Peninsula. This allowed two generations of desert locusts to swarm. Each generation can be 20 times larger than the last, “wrote Matt Simon with Wired.
And like the coronavirus, “the scary reality is that if you don’t stop a swarm of locusts early, there is very little you can do to stop them from spreading,” Simon said.
Netizens like Namaiyana on Twitter rightly point out that the poorest people will feel the brunt of these crises:
Floods, locusts, covid19, food and locusts again – these are the climate catastrophes East Africa is currently facing, and yes, it is the people living on less than a dollar a day who are most affected by this crisis. #FridaysForFuture
Pic: Alfy Alfredoh pic.twitter.com/Sk0phYKiQm– Namaiyana (@fazeelamubarak) May 1, 2020
When the city of Uvira in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, experienced torrential flooding in late April, it affected the lives of at least 80,000 people, razed homes and claimed the lives of at least 25 people in a single day, according to United. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Most of the people in South Kivu had already been displaced by the violence. Now homeless, it is almost impossible for many to “shelter-in-place” as the DR Congo is also trying to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
On Unguja Island, part of the semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, heavy rains caused the most extreme flooding that some villages have seen since 1978, as reported by politician Simai M. Said:
Comfort my constituents in the town of Ubago after severe flooding. The last such heavy rain recorded around the area was 1978. #Tunguu #Mpakabas
Geplaatst door Simai M Said Mpakabas op Zondag 3 mei 2020
Unfortunately, these disasters have been largely off the radar due to the worldwide laser focus on the coronavirus pandemic:
While the world is focused on # COVID-19, my hometown #Uvira, Eastern DRC, is almost wiped out by the floods. Dozens of children and women have died. Humanitarian aid is desperately needed. #JeSuisUvira #IamUvira. pic.twitter.com/MtbREhTrO5
– Bukeni Waruzi (@bukeniwaruzi) April 19, 2020
“Reconfiguring the world”
This “melting pot season” of the coronavirus plague exposes all sorts of contradictions, according to Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, who wrote an eloquent letter titled “The Plague, the Populists and Us” on The Elephant, an online portal.
The “preferred self-delusions and mythologies we have about ourselves and the place of the” other “have been worn away and, in some cases, have fallen apart in a very public way,” he wrote. “I look forward to a massive reorientation, remodeling, and reconfiguration of the world.
In fact, addressing East Africa’s current dilemma (three overlapping crises at once) requires creativity, resilience, leadership, and substantial investment to “reconfigure the world.”
Adesina, President of the African Development Bank, recommends several life-saving policies to be enacted across Africa to stop the collective blow from the coronavirus, locusts and floods: one, establish a tax-free “green channel” in Africa to accelerate releasing flow of food and pesticides; two, take steps to avoid rising food prices and anti-hoarding policies and free food from government-controlled grain stocks; and three, invest in food production technology that is safe and innovative.
Focusing only on the coronavirus in East Africa, and not also desert locusts or massive flooding due to climate change, is not an option. The future depends on it.
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