This archive report was first published on 2 November 2021.
On Tuesday, a new swarm of desert locusts was spotted in Mandera's Rhamu Dimtu area, having arrived from neighboring Ethiopia.
According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the locusts are expected to migrate north through the Ethiopian Highlands to the Red Sea coast of Eritrea and southeast to eastern Ethiopia and northern Somalia.
Although the FAO had projected increased breeding in areas likely to receive rainfall, the agency remained optimistic that the scale of potential invasions would be subdued.
"Although the scale of this migration is nearly impossible to predict due to conflict and a lack of reporting, the swarm numbers and sizes should be limited and certainly much less than last year at this time," FAO stated in its situation update published on October 14, 2021.
