by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - Christian aid groups, along with pesticide-wielding UN troops, are deploying to eastern Africa to fight a locust swarm that experts say is the worst to hit the region in 70 years and could grow by 500 times between now and June.
World Vision has sent workers to distribute drought-resistant maize seed, maize meal, and cowpeas to some of the 19 million people across Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania who have been affected "significant" food shortages, according to UN experts.
"There's not enough water to generate electricity so businesses and companies have 15 hours, 16 hours of no electricity a day," Mark Kelly of World Vision Zambia said in an interview with CBN News. "That also has an impact on people being able to earn money, that has an impact on being able to buy food."
Swarms 250 times the size of a football field are able in a single day to eat "the same amount of food as the entire population of Kenya," according to Keith Cressman of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Three of the countries affected are in the top ten nations where Christian persecution is the worst, according to Open Doors USA's 2020 World Watch List.