Over the past 17 years the USAID Assistance for Emergency Locust/Grasshopper Abatement (AELGA) project, formerly known as the Africa Emergency Locust/Grasshopper Assistance project, has built a reputation among its partners in sub-Saharan Africa as one of the region's strongest allies in the battle against emergency trans-boundary outbreak pests (ETOPs) such as desert locusts, grasshoppers and armyworm that can threaten food security. AELGA's major thrust has been to establish national and regional capacities to implement prevention and mitigation of pest outbreaks and ensure environmental safety through: bilateral and regional training activities and programs to build African capacity to monitor, survey, rapidly report, and safely manage and control pest; environmental impact assessments to provide guidance on how to reduce environmental impacts of pesticide spraying campaigns; studies on alternative control methods and plague development dynamic; collaborate in and support multi-donor activities including obsolete pesticide disposal and emergency pesticide application through the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as well as regional pest control organizations and outreach activities to US Embassies, USAID missions, partners and other stakeholders to help guide ETOP-related policy and decision making processes. While ETOPs will continue to occur, they are now being detected earlier, control efforts are coordinated better, in a more sustainable manner and with less harmful insecticides, and control programs are increasingly being handled by the countries in which the outbreaks occur.