Locusts invasion in East Africa
Desert locusts are the most destructive migratory pests in the world. Billions of locusts have been feeding throughout East Africa, devouring in their path, posing an unprecedented serious threat to the food supply and livelihoods of millions of people.
Severe weather anomalies -linked to a climate-change-driven event in the Indian Ocean- have created ideal conditions for locust breeding. Swarms of desert locusts from the Arabian Peninsula began rampaging across East Africa in early 2020, devouring crop and vegetation where they landed in a crisis that reached historic proportions.
Kenya had not seen such severe desert locust outbreaks in more than 70 years. COVID-19 restrictions have significantly slowed efforts to fight the infestation, as crossing borders has become harder creating delays and disrupting the supply chains of products needed to prevent these pests from wiping out vegetation across the region and exposing millions of people to high levels of food insecurity.
Luis Tato
Luis Tato is a photojournalist based in Nairobi, Kenya. Currently, he combines his work covering mainly East Africa as a stringer for Agence France-Presse and other international publications while developing his own photojournalism projects with a focus on sociology, identity and resilience. Tato gained a degree in audiovisual communication and began his career covering Spain’s Financial Crisis for print media, news agencies and several NGOs. He then became a regular contributor to the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia covering daily news and sports. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Telegraph, National Geographic, Der Spiegel, Die Welt, Internazionale, El País, El Mundo and La Vanguardia among others. Tato has gained numerous honors including a World Press Photo Award, the Rémi Ochlik Award and Picture of the Year International awards among others.
Exhibition presented within the framework of the Zoom Photo Festival Saguenay.
For more information on the Zoom Photo Festival Saguenay, consult the zoomphotofestival.ca
