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posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 24 2020, @08:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the eating-their-way-through dept.

Locust swarms arrive in South Sudan, threatening more misery:

Swarms of locusts which are wreaking havoc across East Africa have now arrived in South Sudan, the government said Tuesday, threatening more misery in one of the world's most vulnerable nations.

Billions of desert locusts, some in swarms the size of Moscow, have already chomped their way through Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan and Uganda.

Their breeding has been spurred by one of the wettest rainy seasons in the region in four decades.

Experts have warned the main March-to-May cropping season is at risk. Eggs laid along the locusts' path are due to hatch and create a second wave of the insects in key agricultural areas.

The arrival of the locusts could be catastrophic in South Sudan, where war followed by drought and floods has already left six million people—60 percent of the population—facing severe hunger.

Agriculture Minister Onyoti Adigo Nyikiwec said the locusts had crossed the eastern border with Uganda on Monday.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday February 24 2020, @05:49PM (1 child)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Monday February 24 2020, @05:49PM (#961906) Homepage Journal

    Um...I do think I listed the African governments as the first and foremost problem.

    However, Western aid has done a lot of long-term harm. Humanitarian aid can be - and often is - a short-term patch that causes long-term problems. Good intentions count for nothing, if you don't consider the actual consequences of your intervention.

    To repeat the example I already mentioned: An African farmer can't compete with free. Dump shiploads of free or cheap food on a country, and you may feed the hungry for a while, but the farmers go out of business. That is a genuine and serious problem - even assuming that the aid doesn't get confiscated by the local strongman and re-sold elsewhere. Here is just one article discussing this issue. [mg.co.za]

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2020, @09:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2020, @09:10PM (#962003)

    Not sure who is modding you down, but when I spent some time abroad helping the locals build water pumping and distribution systems I saw this first hand.

    The free hand outs don't replace the farmers, but it definitely affects their bottom line which means they don't have sufficient margin to invest in their own infrastructure.

    The programs that seemed to be the most beneficial long term were efforts involving education (ie. schooling, sex education, infrastructure engineering/labour, health). The other thing that seemed to be helping to some degree in addition to the sex education was the availability of contraception, especially condoms that also protect against STI/STDs which are rampant in that part of the world.

    It always comes down to the old adage: give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for the rest of his life.