Somalia is set to benefit from a £18 funding from the UK to fight the desert locust invasion in East Africa and South West Asia.
The UK’s International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan announced the additional funding Thursday noting the aid will be instrumental in curtailing further spread and impact of the locusts.
About £17 million of the funding will be channeled through the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) while £1 million will go towards improving early warning and forecasting systems for desert locusts, so that countries can prepare for their arrival, a statement from the UK embassy in Mogadishu noted.
“The outbreaks of desert locusts in Somalia and Somaliland are affecting some of the most vulnerable communities in the country, who are already having a very difficult year as a result of floods and COVID,” UK ambassador to Somalia Ben Fender said.
Somalia is among the countries adversely affected with hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmlands destroyed by the locusts which first made way into the country mid 2019.
The new funding follows £8 million ($9.8 million)provided by the UK earlier this year to the FAO locust appeal, supporting Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Tanzania and Pakistan.
