African news : breaking news, features, analysis

Attack in Maiduguri kills at least 16, hours after Boko Haram assault on outskirts of city leaves at least 10 dead.

China has committed to phasing out the domestic manufacture and sale of ivory products for the first time.

Muhammadu Buhari has been sworn in as Nigeria's president, promising to bring "increased prosperity" to Africa's most populous country.

Islamic State militants in Libya say they have seized the airport in the city of Sirte, as the group continues to make advances in the country.

Muhammadu Buhari has been sworn in as Nigeria's president, promising to bring "increased prosperity" to Africa's most populous country.

Nigeria's president elec, Muhammadu Buhari, is due to be sworn in as leader of Africa's most populous country.

NAIROBI—Africa’s fitful and uneven economic growth will gain momentum this year and next, three prominent organizations said in a joint report released on Monday.

At least 37 people killed after fighters storm town of Gubio in Borno state in five-hour assault, witnesses say.

Boko Haram fighters have killed at least 37 people and destroyed more than 400 buildings in an assault on the town of Gubio in northeastern Nigeria's Borno state, witnesses say. The latest attack, which a military source said involved about 50 Boko Haram members storming Gubio, lasted for around five hours on Saturday afternoon and ended at about 9.30pm local time, Malam Yusuf Mohammed, a local resident, told the Reuters news agency.

Details of such attacks often take a number of days to surface outside of the affected areas due to poor telecommunications in the remote northeastern region of Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy and most populous nation.

"They came, shooting, threatening to kill everybody. They set fire on many houses, burnt down our peoples' vehicles and motorcycles," Bukar Mondama, the leader of a local vigilante group, told Kashim S

For months, the UN's top human rights officials knew about allegations of child sexual abuse by French soldiers in Central African Republic, collected by their own staff.

But they didn't follow up because they assumed French authorities were handling it, statements marked “strictly confidential” show, even as France pressed the UN for more information about the case. In a signed statement obtained by The Associated Press, the deputy high commissioner for human rights also says that her colleague who first informed French authorities last July did it because he didn't think the recently created UN peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic would act on the allegations.

A year after the UN first heard allegations from children as young as 9 that French soldiers had sexually abused them, sometimes in exchange for food, it seems that the only person who has been punished is the UN staffer who told French authorities.

The deputy high commissioner, Flavia Pan

South Africa’s mining industry has shed more than 35,000 jobs in two years as it has been battered by labour unrest, rising costs and weak commodity prices, reports The Financial Times.

The scale of the job losses — equivalent to one out of 14 workers in the sector — indicates how the labour unrest that has plagued the industry since the police shooting of 34 striking miners at Marikana in 2012 has accelerated restructuring in the sector.

Mining is one of the biggest private sector employers in South Africa and the new data from the Chamber of Mines — seen by the Financial Times — provide the first detailed analysis of the extent of job losses since the shooting.

South Africa is still ranked the fifth largest gold producer. But the sector has been in decline since the 1990s, during which time the number of people emplooyed across the mining industry plummeted from about 800,000 to below 500,000.

Both sectors are dependent on labour intensive, deep lev

Al-Shabaab gunmen killed around 25 Kenyan police on Monday, ambushing some officers in a village in the east of the country after others died when their vehicle hit a landmine planted by the militants.

The Islamist group also burnt five vehicles in the two incidents.

"We took all their weapons. There were some Kenyan forces that escaped in the course of the ambush fighting," he said.

Some 20 police died in the ambush, which occurred in Monday evening in Yumbis village, 45 miles north of the town of Garissa, the Standard and Daily Nation newspapers said.

Police spokesman Masoud Mwinyi confirmed there had been an attack in Yumbis. Other government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Al Shabaab, which has carried out several at

Nigeria's biggest mobile phone operator MTN has warned that its network faces shutdown due to fuel shortages that have crippled the nation.

Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto has defended the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) from critics, saying the Opposition must put their house in order if they want to earn the confidence of Kenyans.

The Oyo State Police Command have arrested a suspected member of a robbery gang on his wedding day.

The leader of a small Burundian opposition party has been shot dead in the capital Bujumbura, witnesses said, as tensions continue in the country.

A Somali member of parliament has been shot dead in Mogadishu in an attack by suspected Islamist militants.

A Malawi court has ruled that 11 prostitutes who were forced to take HIV tests by police six years ago will be awarded damages, a court official said Thursday citing a judgement.

The sex workers were rounded up in 2009 in the southern city of Mwanza, hauled to a government hospital for HIV testing without their consent and the results were disclosed in an open court. High court judge Dorothy Kamanga ordered that the prostitutes "should be compensated and file for compensation within 14 days," according to the ruling handed down on Wednesday and read out to AFP by a court clerk.

The judge said actions by both police and health workers in subjecting the women to forced HIV tests, and disclosing their sta

More than 70 Chinese vessels have been found fishing illegally off the coast of West Africa, Greenpeace says.

Using information gathered from 2000 to 2014, Greenpeace said Chinese companies had fished in prohibited grounds or under-declared their catches. Boats either turned off their identification systems or transmitted false location data, it added. One company's fishing capacity off the coast of Guinea Bissau is said to have exceeded its authorised limit by 61%. The absence of efficient fisheries management in some West African states allows rogue companies to plunder marine resources, the BBC's Thomas Fessy reports from Dakar in Senegal.

In less than a month, Greenpeace documented an average of one new case of illegal practice by a Chinese-