September 27, 2004 DAKAR: Funds are being offered to assist north and west Africa in the fight against the worst locust plague in more than a decade, but the cash may be too little, too late for Mauritania, which has been invaded for a second time since August.
The World Bank announced it would grant seven Sahel countries credit advances worth a total US$12.5 million to help battle the locusts that have munched their way across an estimated four million hectares of cropland and devoured millions of tonnes of grain from Mauritania to Chad.
Their arrival this year could not have come at a worse time for the arid nations, which had endured three years of drought or more before ample rains began to fall last summer -- creating ideal breeding conditions for the grasshopper-like insects.
The agreement represents a preliminary pay-out to Burkina Faso, Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Chad under the Bank's program to assist the locust-infested countries.
The program is also to include guarantees for food security and a preliminary alert system, and would allow the "retroactive" funding of anti-locust activities until January 2005.
An estimated US$100 million is needed to help countries beat back the advancing swarms as well as lay groundwork to prevent further breeding and hatching cycles of immature locusts known as hoppers, which can carpet a square kilometre with as many as 80 million of the finger-length insects.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development announced it would contribute US$1.55 million to finance long-term anti-locust efforts, to include training and equipment for laboratories across the infested region.
So far US$16 million have been pledged by international donors to the anti-locust fight, with commitments of an additional US$40 million to help beat back the swarms and stave off a food crisis in some of the world's poorest countries.
UN officials in Mali have predicted that swarms will destroy about one million tonnes of its grain crop this year -- about one third of the food supply for the landlocked country's 12 million people.
Worst-hit so far has been Mauritania, where roughly 1.6 million hectares have been laid fallow by the golden clouds of insects, which are able to travel up to 200km in a single day, consuming as much food as 2500 people.
The skies darkened with locust swarms again this week over the massive desert country the size of France and Spain combined.
"Our green spaces have again gone yellow from these insects who are eating everything in sight," sighed the government's anti-locust task force leader Mohamed Addallahi Ould Babah.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warned that Mauritania is not the only country in the flight path of new advancing swarms. Immature swarms have begun to form in northern Senegal and in Mali as well as in parts of Niger, moving swiftly north and north-west.
"Although control operations have increased, there are serious shortages of pesticide and aircraft in many countries," FAO said in a statement. "Consequently, more swarms are expected to move into Mauritania and the southern portion of northwest Africa in the coming weeks."
