- Swarms of desert locusts are moving across parts of North Africa after following ideal breeding conditions in late 2024 and early 2025, raising fears of major locust infestations moving south into the Sahel later this year.
- The Commission for Controlling the Desert Locust in the Western Region (CLCPRO) has conducted joint surveys and provided equipment and vehicles to strengthen ground response in countries like Libya and Tunisia.
- Mobile apps are helping to integrate Indigenous knowledge and local observations with enhanced satellite and remote monitoring of areas where desert locusts breed.
- These and other efforts are working to keep up with climate change, which has enhanced conditions that spur desert locust outbreaks, and regional insecurity which undermines already patchy monitoring of outbreaks on the ground.
NAIROBI — Swarms of desert locusts are moving across parts of North Africa. With unusually heavy rains in late 2024 supporting growth of vegetation, and rising temperatures since February 2025 speeding their reproductive cycle, ideal breeding conditions for locusts are in place. Significant outbreaks have already been reported in Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, while smaller bands have appeared elsewhere across the Sahara Desert’s northern boundary, and in Saudi Arabia.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and its regional partners have issued caution-level alerts for Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Chad, and Niger. The FAO is coordinating efforts with national authorities to prevent the insects from spreading south into the Sahel, where further rains could trigger a new wave of breeding.
“The current outbreaks are due to very favorable breeding conditions over a six-month period in the northern Sahel, following significant rainfall in August and September 2024,” said Cyril Piou of FAO’s Desert Locust Information Service (DLIS).
For now, these outbreaks are significant, but not on the scale of those that preceded swarms that devastated East Africa in 2019 and 2020. That earlier crisis affected more than 20 countries, with swarms covering hundreds of square kilometers and threatening the food security of more than 20 million people. It was triggered by an unusual combination of cyclones and sustained rains that enabled desert locusts to breed rapidly in the Persian Gulf States and the Horn of Africa.
Piou said continued vigilance is needed, as fresh rainfall creates the potential for a population surge in the coming weeks. To improve monitoring, FAO is using satellite and remote sensing tools to monitor breeding conditions and has rolled out enhanced forecasting tools and mobile platforms under a digital tool called the eLocust system, including a smartphone-based app that allows both trained officers and community members to report sightings directly from the field.
“The forecasting models themselves also require further development, as they currently cover only part of the locust life cycle and cannot replace high-quality field data,” Piou told Mongabay.
Regional cooperation is crucial to locust control: The FAO’s Commission for Controlling the Desert Locust in the Western Region (CLCPRO), which includes 11 member countries, has this year deployed regional task forces, conducted joint surveys, and provided equipment and vehicles to strengthen ground response in countries like Libya and Tunisia.
But armed conflict in parts of Libya, Chad, and Mali continues to restrict access to key breeding zones. “Even with highly accurate forecasting models and strong national preparedness, if locusts breed in areas where control and survey teams cannot operate, outbreaks will continue to occur and spread,” Piou told Mongabay.
Climate change is reshaping the environmental conditions that drive desert locust outbreaks, making them more frequent, intense, and harder to predict, said Bessy Eva Kathambi, who specializes in biodiversity conservation and the implementation of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “Unprecedented rainfall provides green vegetation, which aids in the breeding of the locusts,” she explained. “The 2019-2020 crisis in East Africa was directly linked to several powerful tropical cyclones that brought heavy rainfall to normally arid areas.”
Kathambi added that warming temperatures shorten the incubation time of locust eggs and speed up the development of hoppers (as locusts are called in their wingless, juvenile phase), enabling faster population growth. Erratic rainfall and changing seasonal patterns are also opening new breeding windows in previously unaffected areas. “Climate variability makes it harder to know where and when swarms will form,” she said.
Acknowledging recent improvements in satellite monitoring and forecasting, she stressed the need for stronger ground verification and local knowledge to support early warning systems and regional preparedness.
“Outbreaks typically start in remote regions that are difficult to monitor due to their vast size, logistics of ground travel, and oftentimes conflict,” said Arianne Cease, director of the Global Locust Initiative. These areas often lack consistent surveillance, because governments tend to deprioritize monitoring programs in the long stretches between major outbreaks, she said.
“With so many urgent priorities, it’s difficult for governments to prioritize localized monitoring and management programs. Thus begins the vicious cycle whereby local knowledge is lost and infrastructures degrade until favorable ecological conditions return and an upsurge spurs scrambling to get a response team in place,” Cease told Mongabay.
She added that early-stage outbreaks can be contained if detection and coordination happen quickly. Tools like the mobile app eLocust3m, alongside SMS and WhatsApp, make it easier for farmers and herders to quickly report sightings to the responsible authorities, but monitoring still needs further strengthening.
“Timely data gathering and transmission from remote areas remain a major obstacle to effective early response,” Cease said.
“Indigenous knowledge and local community observations, especially in areas where desert locusts commonly breed, can be a cornerstone for monitoring programs,” she said. “These breeding areas will have locusts more regularly and people will likely be familiar with them and have deep knowledge on their biology and ecology.”
In Ethiopia, for example, community-based communication systems like Dagu (in Afar) and Abogereb (in Tigray) have long supported the sharing of environmental information, including early warnings of locust activity. To avoid future crises, experts emphasize sustained investment in local monitoring systems and long-term regional cooperation, not just during emergencies, but during quiet years as well. Building capacity before swarms emerge, they say, is essential to breaking the cycle of late response.
As summer rains begin to fall across parts of the Sahel, the next few weeks will be crucial. Experts are watching closely to see whether swarms in North Africa will breed again and push farther south. With croplands and pastoral systems already under strain from climate variability and conflict, another locust surge could have severe consequences for food security in the region.
“The desert locust is a litmus test of our ability to cooperate,” Piou said. This season, success will depend not just on good forecasts and fast responses, but also on sustained investment in regional coordination and local resilience.
Banner image: Riding through a locust swarm in Lekiji, Samburu County, Kenya. Image © Sven Torfinn/FAO.
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