The locust plague in Africa continues to spread.

Locusts flying in Kenya. AP.

The plague of locusts is continuing to spread in Africa, reaching as far as central Africa. AP. For the first time since 1944 locusts have been spotted in Congo. Congo is already dealing with insurgency and outbreaks of measles and Ebola. The plague originated in Somalia and has spread to Kenya and Uganda. They have also been spotted in Tanzania, Djibouti, Eritrea and South Sudan.  Locusts can eat massive amounts of crops and fodder for animals, which could cripple Africa's food production. With such massive swarms spreading it is feared that the size of the swarms could grow exponentially. 

My Comment:

Just a quick update. It's pretty clear that the locust swarm isn't going away and is in fact getting worse. With these insects spreading everywhere and laying eggs it sounds like they will be able to grow these swarms quite a bit. The AP article said a 500% increase in the size of the swarm which is unbelievable since the swarm already has billions of insects. 

This is, of course, horrible news for Africa. They already have a lot of problems with feeding people. If they lose a large number of crops and food for animals it's possible we will see a large starvation event. 

And of course Africa has other stability problems. Many of these countries have insurgencies and civil wars, with Congo, Somalia and South Sudan being very big examples. Congo has even worse problems as they also have an Ebola outbreak (which is no longer in the news but seems to still be happening) and a measles outbreak (which never really made the news in the first place).

Even worse is that the Coronavirus outbreak could make things much worse. Not only could Africa become infected, the aid that the continent would be dependent on might not arrive. If the rest of the world is dealing with Coronavirus their will be little will or ability to help Africa with their locust problem. Even if the virus doesn't spread there, it's still going to make this problem much worse than it would have otherwise. 

I have also heard that Pakistan is having similar problems with locusts as well. Though Pakistan is better prepared for it than Africa is, it's still not a good thing for them. Pakistan isn't exactly a well run country on it's own and has some of the same problems that Africa has as well. We might have yet another country having food issues at a very sensitive time in the world... 

Finally, I do have to say that 2020 has been almost biblical in nature. Plagues of locusts, new viruses general chaos, what is next, every firstborn son getting killed? There is the old superstition that bad things come in three, leaving the obvious question, what comes next?