The FAO Representative in Namibia, Ms. Farayi Zimudzi (center, left) hands over the smart gadgets to Ms. Ndiyakupi Nghituwamata, MAWLR's Acting Executive Director (center, right).

Windhoek, Namibia - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), as part of its support towards Namibia’s locust response activities, recently handed over 56 Samsung Galaxy A12 smartphones and 40 tablets to the Ministry Agriculture, Water and Land Reform (MAWLR).

The donation is in line with the implementation of the ‘Rapid Response to the African Migratory Locust Outbreak in Southern Africa’ project, and forms part of the FAO’s long-standing support towards locust response activities in Namibia.

“The electronic equipment is primarily intended to assist the Ministry of Agriculture to carry out locust surveillance and monitoring activities more effectively,” said Farayi Zimudzi, FAO Representative in Namibia.

According to Zimudzi, these devices will contribute to effective and timely surveillance, monitoring and reporting of locust activities, which is crucial to the subsequent actions to ensure food security.

“Due to the transboundary nature of these pests and the credible threats they pose to food and nutrition security, and upon request from government, FAO saw it fit to avail this technical assistance.”

She highlighted that FAO was doing this with the aim of ensuring food and nutrition security, and safeguarding the livelihoods of vulnerable people in affected regions.

“Having first deployed its own resources during the first waves of the locust outbreak here in Namibia as well as in the neighbouring states, FAO realised the need to reach out to its partners to join forces in this protracted battle with these critters,” Zimudzi said. 

As such, with funding from United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), FAO is facilitating the implementation of a regional project covering Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

According to her, the project aims at preventing the spread of the African migratory locust, red locust and brown locust species through better monitoring and surveillance and effective response through strengthened national and regional coordination.

Speaking at the handover, MAWLR Acting Executive Director, Ndiyakupi Nghituwamata, thanked FAO for the contribution as Namibia continues to battle with the transboundary pests which have caused significant damage to food security over the past years.

“The devices will be distributed to the locust hotspots across the country to enhance rapid response and surveillance as these high-impact outbreaks of locusts compound the already fragile food and nutrition situation in the country,” said Nghituwamata.

She also added that the same smart devices could also be of use to the Ministry for reporting the occurrence of other pests such as Fall Armyworms in crop-growing regions and when conducting surveys like the country’s annual crop yield estimation.