FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said today the Desert Locust upsurge in the Horn of Africa threatened to provoke a humanitarian crisis and appealed for urgent funding to tackle the outbreak in order to protect livelihoods and food security.

An estimated 4.1 million people are acutely food insecure in Somalia, according to the latest post-Deyr assessment released by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has provided 4 500 drought-affected pastoral households in the Somali region of Ethiopia with unconditional cash transfers to meet their immediate needs and invest in productive activities.

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.

Transhumance in the Sahel region is characterized by ancestral practices, and represents socio-cultural and economic exchanges between populations of bordering countries.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in collaboration with the Government of Rwanda has launched a new project to support farmers severely affected by last year’s floods in the Kirehe district.

Three United Nations (UN) agencies have launched the Safe Access to Fuel and Energy Plus Livelihoods (SAFE Plus) project in Dhaka alongside the Government of Bangladesh to mitigate deforestation and improve livelihood opportunities in Cox’s Bazar.

Between 2018 and the first half of 2019, Haiti experienced a long period of drought due to the El Niño phenomenon. As a result, agricultural production decreased by at least 12 percent compared with the previous year, which was already lower than the general average production rate.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has started training 300 National Youth Service (NYS) trainees as part of its action plan to boost the Government of Kenya’s surveillance and control of the worst desert locust invasion the country has seen in 70 years.

The worst desert locust crisis in 25 years is underway in Ethiopia, where around 90 000 ha of cropland and pasture are already reported to have been infested. 

Some 6.5 million people in South Sudan - more than half of the population - could be in severe acute food insecurity at the height of the lean season (May-July), three United Nations agencies warned today.

The Government of Ethiopia is racing against time to control Desert Locusts as the February – May Belg season starts. With support from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Ministry of Agriculture is scaling up aerial and ground operations in Oromia and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' (SNNP) regions – Belg crop-producing areas.

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.

Tools are available to wrestle Fall Armyworm, a voracious invasive species that is ravaging crops in Africa, Asia and the Near East, and it is imperative to intensify coordination to curb the insect's spread.

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.

Farmers in northeastern Nigeria who received training, seed and fertilizer from FAO had significantly greater harvests than their peers, a 2019 rainy season yield assessment has revealed. 

Funded by the United Nations Development Programme Multi-Partner Trust Fund, the Ezingo project represents a collective response by FAO together with other UN agencies - United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Children’s Fund - to support the recovery of and empowerment of young people in the Central African Republic.

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), through the German Development Bank KfW, has contributed EUR 50 million ($54 million) to a resilience building programme to be implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

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.