World Bank’s Anti – Locust Project
The World Bank (WB) disclosed that it has contributed to a broader effort to finance surveys to detect desert locusts on 3.3 million hectares of land as part of its Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) initiative.
According to the World Bank, the bank supported control operations on 611,294 hectares and 54% of affected areas and has committed a total of $1.54 billion funds in lending for Food and Nutrition Security from April 2022 through June 2023in the Horn of Africa,
“The Ethiopia Locust Response Project provides $63 million in assistance to scale up ongoing surveillance and control measures. It will also provide seed and fertilizer packages to more than 150,000 farmers to ensure planting during the upcoming cropping season. In pastoralist areas, it will provide emergency fodder to more than 113,000 households,” the bank indicated.
Locust Invasion and Food Insecurity In Africa
The global food and nutrition crisis has been intensifying since 2014; the World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 221 million people across 54 IDA countries are facing acutely food-insecure conditions or worse – a 71 percent increase from 2019.
Food insecurity is driven by a variety of interlinked causes including instability and related population displacements, the impact of weather extremes, disrupted food systems, limited food production, barriers to regional trade, poor policy choices, and the socioeconomic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition, the war in Ukraine has worsened the situation, leading to increased and volatile prices for food and other commodities.
Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing a storm of factors – a food, fuel, and fertilizer crisis exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the economic impacts of COVID-19, rising inflation and debt, and extreme weather events resulting from climate change.
It’s estimated that in five countries in the Sahel known as the G5 Sahel (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger), 10.2 million people were food insecure from June to August 2023. Out of these, more than 900,000 people were in emergency situations, and in Burkina Faso and Mali more than 45,000 people faced famine.
At least 36 million people across the Horn of Africa are severely food insecure as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia experience the worst drought in 40 years.
In the aftermath of cyclone Freddy in 2023, Malawi and Mozambique saw the prices of food staples such as maize soar to 300 percent higher, worsening levels of food and nutrition insecurity.
A Multi-sectoral Approach to Food and Nutrition Security
The World Bank is one of the largest sources of development finance for addressing food and nutrition insecurity, committing over $60 billion in financing from 1980 until 2022, two-thirds of which came from IDA.
This trend has been sustained; in April 2022 the Bank announced a comprehensive, global response to the food and nutrition security crisis, and has scaled up its operational engagement, surpassing its initial commitment of $30 billion over 15 months for global FNS response, and making $45 billion available through a combination of $22 billion in new lending and $23 billion from its existing portfolio.
Regional Solutions to Rapidly-evolving Crises
In the G5 Sahel, IDA19/IDA20 resources have reached almost 5 million beneficiaries through CERCs, CRW ERF and reallocation. In 2022, food vouchers covering four months of basic food needs supported 153,000 households (700,000 people) in Mali through the Mali Drylands Development Project.
In Niger, 295,000 households received 9,000 tons of improved seeds and cassava cuttings through the Agriculture and Livestock Transformation and the Climate-Smart Agriculture Support Projects, and 73,500 people, including 32,500 women, were provided with temporary jobs. In Burkina Faso, cash transfers supported 500,000 food insecure people during the lean season.
In the Horn of Africa in 2020, the Bank funded the regional Emergency Locust Response Program (ELRP) in response to the biggest locust upsurge in 30 years, which destroyed crops and grazing land in many parts of the region, significantly affecting incomes and food security.
The ELRP takes a multiphase Programmatic Approach, to support Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in increasing control and surveillance of new pest outbreaks, restoring livelihoods for vulnerable households and affected communities, and creating a framework for response to such outbreaks in the future.
ELRP contributed significantly to swarm surveillance by financing operations on over 10 million hectares of land. It financed ground and aerial locust control on over 530,000 hectares across Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya alone.
In Ethiopia, the ongoing Lowlands Livelihood Resilience Project is improving the resilience of the livelihoods of pastoral and agro-pastoral communities, and has provided support to 1.45 million people, provided over 500,000 pastoralists and agro-pastoral farmers with agricultural services and assets, has covered close to 300,000 hectares with sustainable land management practices, and has played a critical role in responding to the severe drought that affected the country in 2022.
In the Horn of Africa (HOA), a medium-term program with an estimated cost of $16 billion is improving food and nutrition security by enhancing regional infrastructure networks and trade and economic integration.
Economic corridors, identified as a key area for support, account for 57 percent of the program, with coordinated corridor projects in different countries. For example, the $750 million HOA Gateway Development Project aims to benefit 3.2 million people in Northeast Kenya. In Ethiopia, which ranks third globally in its severely food-insecure population, the Bank provided for 8 million food-insecure people annually through the Ethiopia Strengthening Adaptive Safety Net Project (SEASN) in food and cash assistance.
Up to $897 million in financing has been provided in the country’s portfolio to address food insecurity, and a reallocation of $121 million for immediate response to a recent drought in the South and East is assisting 7 million people affected through short-term food and cash.
Collaborating for Impact on the Ground
The World Bank is working with a diverse range of partners along the humanitarian-development-peace nexus to bring together complementary strengths to enhance food and nutrition security crisis response and preparedness at the global, regional, and country level.
The World Bank is co-lead of the Global Alliance on Food Security (GAFS), which brings together over 60 multilateral and bilateral partners – including governments, UN agencies, international organizations, and civil society organizations to help improve coordination of policy and financial response to the crisis and advance resilience-building.
In Africa the bank is working directly with continental, regional and sub-regional organizations, such as the African Union (AU), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), and the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF).
The FSRPs, for example, directly strengthen the capacity of these existing African organizations. Another program focusing on enhancing the capacity of African institutions is the Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA), a program aiming to scale up agriculture science and innovation for a climate-resilient future in Africa.
At the country level, the bank is developing Food Security Crisis Preparedness Plans (FSCPPs) together with key partners on the ground, including WFP, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in countries receiving support through the CRW ERF, the WB pointed out.
It is also working in 17 countries in partnership with FAO, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Meridian Institute, Just Rural Transition, and others to support transformational changes in agricultural policies towards achievement of resilient agri-food systems.
It also partners with key actors around the humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding nexus in IDA FCS, as conflict and crisis can also be drivers of food insecurity. On nutrition, the World Bank’s institutions are founding partners of the Scaling Up Nutrition movement, with strong ties to bilateral partners, civil society, foundations, and United Nations agencies.
A Pipeline of Support for Food Security
The 2023 Roadmap for evolving the World Bank’s mission, operations, and resources emphasizes the impact of climate change on labor productivity, agricultural yields, water availability, natural disaster risks, and migration, particularly for poorer countries.
These factors are already exacerbating the food security challenge in client countries. Food and Nutrition Security has been identified as one of eight global challenges for the World Bank to focus on.
To meet this challenge, and to help break the cycle of food and nutrition insecurity by 2030, the World Bank is launching a Global Challenge Program on Food and Nutrition Security, focusing on : strengthening food stability, availability, utilization, and access; and , establishing and enhancing crisis preparedness, early warning, and early action systems at country, regional, and global levels.
Among other goals, the World Bank will increasingly work to improve sustainable food and nutrition security impacts of countries’ public spending and to mobilize more private investment in sustainable and resilient food systems, the bank announced.