The United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has called for international assistance in tackling vast swarms of desert locusts sweeping across east Africa.
The aid was needed to ‘avert any threats to food security, livelihoods, malnutrition’, an FAO spokesperson said.
The ‘devastating’ and ‘unprecedented’ swarms posed the greatest risk to Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. Ethiopia and Somalia had not faced an infestation on this scale for 25 years, while Kenya last faced a locust threat this size 70 years ago.
The FAO said the ‘speed of the pests’ spread and the size of the infestations are so far beyond the norm that they have stretched the capacities of local and national authorities to the limit’.
To give some idea of the scale of the problem, an FAO fact sheet said a swarm the size of Paris could eat the same amount of food as half the population of France in a single day.
Locusts can travel up to 150 kilometres in a day, with each adult capable of eating its own weight in food each day.
The swarms have reportedly spread from Yemen across the Red Sea, with heavy rainfall late last year creating ideal conditions for the food-devouring insects.