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Assignment: Kenya’s locust hunters

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Kenya’s Locust Hunters

25/06/2020 GMT

Kenya’s locust hunters

BBC World Service - Assignment, Kenya’s locust hunters

As desert locusts swarm across East Africa, can Kenya’s locust hunters prevent a plague?

Billions of desert locusts are swarming across East Africa - destroying crops and threatening livelihoods. It’s a race against time to prevent a plague.

East Africa has seen the worst invasion of desert locusts for decades and there are warnings of even larger swarms to come. Millions of people across the region, who are already feeling the impact of coronavirus and floods, will now face increased hunger and poverty. Just an average swarm can eat the same in a day as 2,500 people for a year.

For Assignment, the BBC’s Senior Africa Correspondent Anne Soy  joins Albert the Samburu herdsman turned locust hunter as he struggles to track the pests who have been decimating crops and pastures across his native northern Kenya. It is a race against time to exterminate this generation before they breed another, larger, more voracious generation. 

Producer: Charlotte Atwood
Editor: Bridget Harney

(Image: Man chasing away a swarm of desert locusts in Samburu County, Kenya. Credit: Fredrik Lerneryd/Getty Images)

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