Kenya’s locust hunters
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2020
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Never seen anything like this, millions upon millions of locusts everywhere. Look at that. |
| 0:17.0 | They've completely taken over the vegetation here. You can barely see the leaves leaves and once they are done eating it will |
| 0:25.8 | look like it's dry. |
| 0:29.2 | In December last year locusts started swarming across East Africa. |
| 0:39.0 | Now, hundreds of billions of these tiny creatures have invaded the region. |
| 0:43.2 | I am Ansui and this is assignment for the BBC World Service. I join Kenya's locust hunters as they try to |
| 0:56.2 | battle the worst outbreak my country has seen in 70 years. |
| 1:00.8 | See, they're eating virtually everything, look. |
| 1:04.0 | All those trees you see in the next one or so by the time, they locust Libya. |
| 1:10.0 | They will have left everything destroyed. They'll have left these trees brown in color. |
| 1:15.0 | They are eating masslessly. |
| 1:18.0 | It's a nightmare. |
| 1:20.0 | If nothing is done, each generation of locusts multiplies by 20. So the race is on to stop them breeding again. |
| 1:30.0 | I'm the BBC's Senior Africa Correspondent and I've been stuck in Nairobi covering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. |
| 1:42.0 | Today I'm leaving the city for the first time in months. |
| 1:47.0 | Data 6.3. Is that okay? Yes. Thank you very much. |
| 1:54.0 | I'm traveling to find out about another crisis that has the potential to be even more destructive |
| 2:00.0 | than COVID-19 for some areas of my country. |
| 2:04.0 | Nairobi is one of the hotspot areas for COVID-19 and so movement in and out of the metropolitan |
| 2:10.0 | area is forbidden except for essential services that includes journalists like us. |
| 2:16.0 | But we still had to get this letter from the Media Council of Kenya just to certify that we |
| 2:21.1 | are allowed to travel outside the metropolitan area. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.