Helcita is a small genus of planthoppers from the family Derbidae, tribe Zoraidini, currently (2024) with only 4 species.

Two species are found in tropical parts of Africa, one in Sri Lanka and southern India, and one in Taiwan and some neighbouring islands of Japan.

[4] The species of Helcita can be distinguished from other similar genera by a combination of features related to the venation of the forewings and the shape of the head.

This venation is similar to that of the genus Pamendanga from which Helcita species can be distinguished by the profile of the head.

The type species, Helcita wahlbergi was described from "terra Natalensi", a part of South Africa now known as the KwaZulu-Natal Province.

[7] In that region, H. wahlbergi has been mainly reported from coastal areas, around the city of Durban and further north along the coast, almost up to the border with Mozambique.

[9] However, 2 years later he realized that this report was based on a misidentification and he renamed the species in Sierra Leone to Helcita occidentalis.

[5][8] In frontal view, the upper part of the face of Helcita species can also be wide, corresponding to the width of the vertex.

[7][1] The very short descriptions by Stål of both the type species and the genus were expanded by subsequent authors, who provided distinguishing characters to similar genera in the tribe Zoraidini, like Pamendanga.

[5][6] In 1906, Distant described the genus Jada, based on a species from Sri Lanka which had been described in 1891 by Kirby as "Derbe (?)

The colouration is described by Distant as "Tawny-yellow; vertex of head, thoracic carinations, and face nearly pure white; apices of tarsi black; tegmina pale tawny-brown, the veins yellow ...".

[10] There are few records of H. occidentalis, but the distribution seems to extend from Sierra Leone to the Central African Republique and to the northern and western parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

[5] Helcita shirakii Yang and Wu, 1993[6] This species has been described from Taiwan, but is also reported from the Ryukyu Islands in southern Japan.