• FAO says over 200,000 households have since January received livelihood assistance.
• It seeks humanitarian response to assist an additional 98,000 households in early 2021.
Image: FAO
The United Nations has appealed for Sh4.5 billion to increase desert locust surveillance and control activities in the most affected countries in 2021.
Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen are some of the countries to benefit. The Food and Agriculture Organisation, a UN agency, has so far received about Sh22 billion from donors and partners to finance control efforts.
This has allowed governments to rapidly scale up locust response capacity in a region that has not faced an upsurge of the pest on this scale in generations.
FAO director-general Qu Dongyu said without additional funding, control efforts could slow down or halt from the end of January 2021. He said this will potentially allow the numbers of the crop-devouring pest to surge in some places.
In a statement released on Wednesday, FAO estimates that more than 35 million people are already acutely food-insecure in the five countries. It further said that this number could increase by another 3.5 million if nothing is done to control the latest outbreak.
“Over 200,000 households have already received livelihood assistance and that number is expected to increase. FAO will assist an additional 98,000 households in early 2021 and is appealing for continuous support, mainly through humanitarian response plans,” he said.
In Kenya, the second wave of desert locust invasion was first reported on November 9, 2020. The pest has since infested nine counties—Garissa, Wajir, Marsabit, Kitui, Lamu, Taita Taveta, Kilifi, Tana River and Mandera.
Government Spokesperson Cyrus Oguna said on Tuesday during a media briefing on desert locust situation that the government has a stock of more than 300,000 litres of pesticide to combat the invasion.
Oguna said if left unchecked, the locusts can destroy farmlands in huge proportions, thereby compromising the country’s food security.
“We are watchful not to let such a situation happen and have deployed necessary interventions to limit further infestation and spread to neighbouring counties,” he said.
FAO stated that more than 1.3 million hectares of locust infestations have been treated in 10 countries since January.
“Control operations have prevented the loss of an estimated 2.7 million tonnes of cereal, worth nearly Sh90 billion in countries already hard hit by acute food insecurity and poverty,” it said.
Edited by F'Orieny