While the eyes of the world are on the novel coronavirus, East Africa continues to struggle with another crisis of biblical proportions: growing swarms of ravenous locusts. 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN is continuing its efforts to contain the desert locust upsurge in East Africa despite restrictions on the movement of personnel and equipment resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

East Africa is going through a massive desert locust infestation that’s stripping farming families of food and income and threatening the food security of millions throughout the region.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today began training 300 National Youth Service (NYS) trainees at as part of its action plan aimed at boosting the Government of Kenya’s (GoK) ground surveillance on desert locusts.

FAO has thanked the government of Sweden for its pledge of $4 million to combat the swarms of crop-devouring desert locusts in East Africa and provide livelihoods support to help affected families weather the crisis.

The effort to stop ravenous swarms of desert locust attacking crops and pastures in East Africa has gotten another boost, thanks to a $19 million contribution from the United States. Early in the respond the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) made initial pledges of nearly $9M to support FAO's response, which it since increased by $10 million more.

Switzerland has pledged $1 million for the ongoing campaign in East Africa aimed at controlling large infestations of the pernicious crop pest and limit damages to crops and pastures that millions of people in the region depend on.

FAO Director-General QU Dongyu has welcomed a €17 million contribution from Germany to provide assistance to those directly affected by the desert locust upsurge in East Africa.

East Africa is a region beset by climate- and conflict-related shocks. Millions of people are already acutely food insecure. Now they face another major hunger threat in the form of desert locusts.

The Africa Solidarity Trust Fund (ASTF) has donated $1 million to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to combat the worsening Desert Locust upsurge in the Horn of Africa.