Locusts are a recurring problem in western Africa, from May to August, but this year hopes appear to be high that a new $13 million, four-year injection from the World Bank for the six-year-old Palucp programme will improve the situation. The swarms of insects can devastate staple crops in a short time. The Africa Project to Combat Locust Invasions, known by its French acronym Palucp, connects seven countries in order to provide technical assistance and training: Mali, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Chad.
Locust Watch, part of the Food & Agriculture Organization in Rome, reports 3 May that locust populations are currently dropping due to dryness in several regions in Africa.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, background, FAO (Fr)
West and Central Africa appear to the be source of a sharp increase since 2008 in illegal trade in ivory, with China as the main destination, according to Traffic, a group that monitors ivory trade. Trafficking has doubled, the group reports. The suspected increase is based on quantities of ivory seized, which are likely only a fraction of the traffic, the group says. No explanation is given for the increase, but the analysis was done in advance of a Cites meeting to review ivory trade. Cites, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, is an international agreement to which countries are signatories.
Europe’s rising demand for cocaine and other illegal drugs has opened up new territories on Africa’s west coast to Latin American drugs cartels, which see higher margins in Europe and an easier time with the law in West African countries. The US Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) reports that it is seeing the same gangs it fights in Mexico and Colombia appearing in countries like Guinea-Bissau, dubbed Africa’s first “narco-state.” Rising demand from Europe and a strong Euro have fueled the supply, according to a report from George Mason University in Virginia, USA. West African countries are a trans-shipment area of choice to Europe because of its proximity and because poverty, years of war, and endemic corruption have weakened institutions that could combat drugs crime. BBC, CNN
