Spodoptera frugiperda, the fall armyworm native to the Americas, was first detected in Africa in 2016 and had spread to all 54 African countries by 2018; it reached India and South Asia in 2018 and China by 2019; the FAO estimates annual maize and sorghum losses of $9.4 billion across sub-Saharan Africa alone, concentrated among smallholder subsistence farmers without access to pesticide or biological control inputs