Intense swarm invasion of Kenya likely from mid-December onwards
Insect Infestation
How the score is calculated
The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.
- Affected people
- 1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
- Deaths
- 1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
- Displaced people
- 1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
- Casualties
- 100 or more: +8
- Story wording
- +10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.
Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.
This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.
Historical record
Status: CLOSED · Imported 2026-10-07
Closed for this historical import at the site owner’s request; not a new assessment of current conditions.
In brief
- What happenedThe worst locust invasion in decades The region is also facing the biggest locust outbreak in over 25 years , and the most serious in 70 years for Kenya.
- How many affectedAffected persons: 9,000
- What help is neededThis outbreak has been made worse by the climate crisis, with unusually heavy rains leading to a growth of vegetation in arid areas, providing locusts with more food, and the conditions needed to develop and reproduce.
What changed
First retained snapshot
No earlier verified snapshot is present in the recovered dataset. This record remains available as the historical baseline.
Situation
The worst locust invasion in decades The region is also facing the biggest locust outbreak in over 25 years , and the most serious in 70 years for Kenya. Millions are sweeping across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia and have decimated thousands of hectares of crops. This outbreak has been made worse by the climate crisis, with unusually heavy rains leading to a growth of vegetation in arid areas, providing locusts with more food, and the conditions needed to develop and reproduce. An average swarm can contain up to 40 million insects , travel up to 150 km in a single day and consume enough food to feed 34 million people within that time. The floods and a new wave of locust infestation will lead to increased food shortages in a region where over 33 million people are already severely food insecure . At the same time, the economic fallout from governments’ efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic is likely to push millions of people further into poverty as there are little or no social safety nets to protect them. Oxfam’s response Oxfam is working closely with local partners in Ethiopia, Kenya. Uganda and Somalia, to provide cash assistance to more than 6,000 households to buy food. We are also distributing soap, hygiene kits and clean water to hospitals and communities. Our staff have been increasing public awareness to help prevent the spread of coronavirus, including broadcasting messages in local languages with megaphones in rural villages. We prioritize support for women, as they are disproportionately affected by the crisis with increased livelihood and childcare burdens, plus higher risks of sexual violence. We can stop the worst from happening. You can save lives by supporting Oxfam’s work providing emergency help to those who need it most.
Linked charities and agencies
WorldsAid verification
A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against 1 attributed source, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. 1 human-impact figure was separated from the narrative and dated where the source allowed. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.
Verified figures
- Affected persons
- 9,000 retained at 2020-12-09
What we knew when
- WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
- Last verification represented by this immutable snapshot.
Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.
Provenance
This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.
Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz
Verified
SHA-256 b291162431689ec91d2a06bfb7e13bd39353c4e4d3d84d552facea90e0bb3a2e