Agriculture and defence ministers from 16 African countries met on Tuesday to marshal their forces for an assault on swarms of locusts whose incursions in West Africa are the worst in more than a decade and could produce widespread food shortages.
Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade called the meeting of the 13-member Western Region Anti-Locust Commission (CLCPRO) last week to plot strategies for a regional battle against the locusts.
He invited South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria to join the ministers from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia.
Tuesday’s session, which followed a day-long gathering of experts coordinated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), was the latest in a series of regional coordination meetings to battle the locusts.
Nine West African and Maghreb countries, all of which were to be represented on Tuesday, met in Algiers in late July to coordinate efforts and their appeal for international aid.
So far, according to the FAO, just $37-million of the estimated $100-million needed to battle the scourge has been contributed by donors such as the United States. Without a rapid infusion of funds, the UN body has warned, the entire harvest for millions of people could be compromised.
”The main effort should be now to protect as much as possible of the next harvest, which is crucial for the food security situation of millions of people in the region,” the FAO said last week.
The finger-length winged insects have infested farmland from Mauritania to Chad, a huge swathe of the world’s poorest continent, at a crucial time in the planting season for staple crops such as millet, sorghum and maize.
Densely packed swarms of up to 80-million insects per square kilometre have travelled as far as 100km a day across the Sahara since early July, mating and laying eggs that are expected to hatch to produce a second infestation in coming weeks.
Unusually heavy rains in the Sahel last year and in north-west Africa earlier this year created the conditions for a locust explosion, allowing four generations to breed in rapid succession.
Though no agenda has been released for Tuesday’s meeting, it is likely to touch on how to incorporate sophisticated chemical and biological methods to battle locusts into a regime that relies heavily on traditional methods, including burning tires and trash or banging pots and pans to scare away the swarms.
The ministers’ meeting might also take some cues from tiny Benin, which has prepared to head off an invasion, mindful that its neighbours on all sides have already been infested.
The country has mobilised its armed forces against the locusts, stationing military units and agricultural protection brigades stretching from the north-east border with Nigeria to the Niger border. — Sapa-AFP