Aerial Spraying to Stop Desert Locust Invasion

Aerial Spraying to Stop Desert Locust Invasion

Somali officials say they have deployed helicopters to spray new swarms of desert locusts that are eating crops and threatening the country’s fragile food supply. 

This aerial spraying will focus on areas in the central Somali region of Galmudug, Puntland in the northeast, and the self-declared republic of Somaliland, the minister said.

Experts have said the desert locust invasion that began last year is the worst East Africa has seen in at least 25 years. Neighboring Ethiopia also began spraying locust-infested areas this week. 

Early this year, after extreme rainfall that created favorable breeding conditions, swarms of desert locusts from the Arabian Peninsula began rampaging across East African countries. 

In February, the pests traveled to Somalia and were seen flying over land used for grazing animals in a remote part of Somalia, forcing the country to declare a national emergency.

Somalia’s minister of agriculture says the pests have been laying eggs, meaning the swarms could get bigger and spread farther.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cinema of Somalia

Image
Cinema of Somalia  Storytelling is an ancient custom in Somali culture. Love of cinema in Somalia is but a modern, visual incarnation and continuation of this well-established oral tradition. The earliest forms of public film display in Somalia were Italian newsreels of key events during the colonial period in Italian Somaliland. Examples of such works include Somalia: Gheledi (1913), Somalia italiana (1913), Somalia: Le bellezze del fiume Nebi (1913), Sotto la Croce del Sud - Somalia Italiana (1926), Visioni della Somalia italiana (1929) and Viaggio di S.M. il Re in Somalia (1934) In the late 1950s there was some collaboration between Rome's Cinecitta and the first Somali directors. As a consequence, in 1963 Hajji Cagakombe's Miyi Iyo Magaalo ("The Countryside and the City" or "Town & Village"), a Somali-Italian co-production, was the country's first full-length feature film Somaliwood A new generation of more entertainment-o
Read more

Heavy fighting erupts in Somali town near Kenyan border

Image
  Heavy fighting broke out overnight in a Somali town near the Kenyan border between Somali forces and those from the state of Jubbaland, as Somalia’s election troubles spill over into violence. Somalia’s information ministry in a statement early Monday accused Kenya-funded rebels of crossing into the town of Bulo Hawo and attacking Somali forces. But the Jubbaland vice president, Mohamud Sayid Adan, told reporters that Jubbaland forces stationed outside the town were attacked by what he called forces recently deployed to the region by the government in the capital, Mogadishu. Both sides claimed victory. The information ministry asserted that Somali forces were in control of the town and that nearly 100 of the suspected rebels had surrendered to Somali forces. But Information Minister Osman Abokor Dubbe later told reporters that five children had been killed and their mother wounded when a mortar round landed on their house. “Ordinary militias don't have mortars and missiles,” the
Read more

Somali Prime Minister announces new cabinet

Image
  Somalia's new prime minister announced his new Cabinet on Monday evening in the capital Mogadishu.  Speaking at the presidential palace flanked by his new ministers, Mohamed Hussein Roble said the new Cabinet consists of a deputy prime minister and 26 ministers, including four women. Fifteen of the new ministers (over 50%) are from the previous Cabinet, with Deputy Prime Minister Khadar Mohamed Gulaid, Finance Minister Abdirahman Duale Beyleh, Foreign Minister Ahmed Isse Awad, and Health Minister Fowzia Abiikar Nur all holding onto their posts. The new Cabinet also includes 17 state ministers and 26 deputy ministers. The new cabinet will need approval from the federal parliament. On Sept. 18, President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed appointed Roble the country's new prime minister after parliament ousted Hassan Ali Khayre, his predecessor. The new prime minister and his Cabinet will have a brief mandate, as the Horn of African country's presidential and parliamentary elections
Read more