Kampala: Farmers in Uganda are bracing for a fresh onslaught of desert locusts after two swarms entered the country from neighbouring Kenya last week, threatening to destroy crops and intensify hunger amid the struggle to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.
Countries across East Africa are battling the worst locust outbreak in decades, with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warning that the situation remained "extremely alarming" as hopper bands and an increasing number of new swarms form in parts of the region. "This represents an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods because it coincides with the beginning of the long rains and the planting season," it said.
In Uganda, the latest insect invasion came through the eastern border district of Amudat on April 3, officials said. Unlike previous swarms of mature, less ravaging insects that crossed into the country in February, the new arrivals comprises insects at a "growth stage" that have the "potential to destroy vegetation wherever they go", said Vincent Ssempijja, Uganda's agriculture minister.
"The nymphs and young locust have high affinity for food. This may pose an imminent danger to food security and livelihoods," he added. Agnes Kirabo, executive director of the Food Rights Alliance, said "this new exodus of swarms is more destructive and a big threat" to food security.
"Farmers have no other way of deriving a livelihood except their farms," she added. "To farmers, it's not a loss of food but a loss of life. This is very tragic and a big threat to an already less resilient agriculture sector and food system."
Farming communities and semi-nomadic herders in the east and the semi-arid northeast Karamoja region, often described as Uganda's poorest and most marginalised region, are particularly at risk, with the crisis exacerbated by the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
"At Karamojong, we have entered into cultivation season. The locust nymphs have emerged now to do their business of destruction," said Loupa Pius, project officer at Dynamic Agropastoralist Development Organisation in Karamoja.
"The second wave of locusts will be another high-level disaster because the crops that have been planted in Karamoja are in danger," he added, calling the government to provide food supplies to the region's vulnerable population amid the pandemic.
