$100m to fight... locusts

2004-08-19 09:12

Dakar - Around $100-million dollars is needed to fight the swarms of locusts that are marauding through West Africa, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, said on Wednesday.

"Our first request (in early July) was for $9-million, but as the funds did not arrive, the scale of the problem now calls for $100-million," he said during a visit to the Senegalese capital.

He warned that any further delays in tackling the problem could lead to a repeat of a situation during the last locust invasion in 1987-89, when "$600-million and five years of struggle was necessary."

Good rains created favourable locust conditions

Diouf said the "front line" against the plague remains Mauritania, where on Tuesday and Wednesday the FAO chief visited agricultural land threatened by the locusts.

Most of the arable land in Mauritania, a massive, arid north-west African country, has been overrun by swarms of the finger-length insects which have infested more than one million hectares since July.

"If we don't manage to stop the plague in Mauritania, they will be flying to Senegal, Mali, Niger and Chad... and beyond this area to Sudan... and even Afghanistan and Pakistan," Diouf said.

A series of good rains, first in the Sahel last summer and then in north-west Africa during winter and spring, have created favourable conditions for locust development, allowing at least four generations of locusts to breed in quick succession.

FAO has warned from Rome that Senegal faces a new wave of swarms and what scientists call hoppers, newly-hatched wingless locusts, which have been spotted along the Senegal River valley and Ferlo valley.

Senegal's agriculture protection chief Mame Nene Lo said earlier on Wednesday that locusts had infested two new regions, bringing the total number of threatened hectares to 111 133.

With swarms of up to 80 million locusts ranging over each square kilometre, it appeared that the insects were winning the battle, President Abdoulaye Wade said on Tuesday, while expressing disappointment that the international community has not responded with vigour to requests for help.

"We have to stop talking about money, it's a waste of time," Wade was quoted as saying by the Senegalese Press Agency. "What we need is concrete help, like equipment and products." - AFP

- SAPA