This article will be original content paraphrased from a article which can be found here. If you are interested in THIS article I invite you to read the original for probably some more detailed information.
Anyway, on to it... what doesn’t Africa need right now?...
PLAGUE!
Okay, so not plague like “the Black Death” bubonic kind of plague. Think more biblical, it seems as though a perfect storm situation of favorable weather and of course the coronavirus, there are a plague level amount of desert locust which have already ripped their way across much of Northern Africa as well as parts of India and some parts of the Middle East as well.
One might wonder, how did this happen? What did we do to deserve this on top of corona, well again it’s kind of a chicken egg situation. It seems a lot of the problems that created the over abundance of locust were indeed a result of COVID. The weather as stated was a blow, but the biggest factor is finical resources as well as the labor to perform many of the operations that mitigate the bug problem were effected by the timing of the corona out break.
Simply put, while the world is struggling to fight the virus we had no time to worry about all the other things we as people normally do.
Now as the locust have passed over Africa and parts of the Middle East and India many fear that on their return migration back in a few months it may be too late to halt the progression of the locus population. With many in Africa worrying about their ability to hold on to their crops for the upcoming year, it’s been estimated that up to 23 million people across mainly Northern Africa, but also the Middle East and India will face could face famine over the coming year(s) as summer rolls onward and residence of these countries await to see what happens when the second round of locust drown out the sun in sky. Many are already submitting whatever applications for assistance they can get from their governments as well as from other global aid programs that exist. Some non profit organizations are already trying to educate and teach farmers in these regions different and more sustainable farming techniques than they may be used to, or would prefer because if the perfect storm that created this problem rolls on as many experts expect it to, than there may be millions starving, or dying of starvation in the coming months as these countries roll through their summer.
It’s not a certainty that this event will occur and only time will tell what can happen, but as the world sits tilted and still very much reeling from the first blow that Coronavirus dealt, many nervous eyes will be watching the skies over Africa, the Middle East and India, all hoping, just hoping for the best.
