On Monday, a dark cloud of desert locusts recently floated over the city of Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland. For more than 40 minutes the moving swarm of locusts covered the city in the Galgodon valley. On Tuesday, remnants of the swarm still hovered over the city.
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad) said last week on Tuesday that it was concerned about the anticipated re-emergence of the stubborn pests in the northernmost parts of Eastern Africa. The region has already undergone multiple cycles of infestation with the persistent insects.
The larger East African region has over the past two years been in and out of the throes of economic and humanitarian crises due to the desert locusts, which arrived from Yemen, first entering Ethiopia and Somalia in June 2019, before spreading across borders into Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan, South Sudan and Chad. Tens of thousands of hectares of farmland and pasture have been damaged by the locusts.
*The views of the above article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Africa Speaks 4 Africa or its editorial team.