EDITORIAL: East Africa states must wage joint war on locust invasion
A group of men attempts to fend off a swarm of desert locusts flying over grazing land in Lemasulani, a village in Kenya's Samburu County on January 17, 2020. PHOTO | NJERI MWANGI | REUTERS
East Africa is experiencing one of the worst locust invasions in decades. If the chaotic reactions in Kenya and Uganda demonstrate anything, it is the loss of communal and institutional memory about an omnipresent, if rare threat.
Commentators are describing the invasion as the most serious in 70 years. That is, however, only partially true if one is looking at North Africa where an outbreak occurred in 2003.Few, if any people born in East Africa after 1962, have actually witnessed an invasion on this current scale.
