Amnesty International said on Thursday that migrants held in Libyan detention camps are subject to horrific sexual violence at the hands of guards, including being forced to barter sex for clean water, food and access to sanitation.

Rwanda will put the capital Kigali and eight other districts across the country under lockdown from Saturday to rein in surging coronavirus cases and deaths, officials said.

Maxwell Dlamini, Jeffrey Smith and Nic Cheeseman write that is tempting to assume the situation in eSwatini will return to normal. They spell out why it will not.

Former DR Congo prime minister Augustin Matata Ponyo has been placed under house arrest by the country's Constitutional Court.

A Gambian court sentenced an ally of ex-dictator Yahya Jammeh to death for his role in the murder of a former finance minister.

Kenyan riot police have fired tear gas at students protesting a decision by a top university to hike tuition fees.

Senegal is experiencing an "unprecedented" surge in Covid-19 infections, the health ministry said, after reporting a new daily record of 733 cases.

King Mswati III has called for a sibaya, an open forum to discuss unrest in Eswatini, but activists have called for a boycott.

Private hospital group Netcare said on Wednesday it has started handing over operations of the Queen Mamohato Memorial Hospital and four of its clinics in Maseru to the Lesotho government.

The Commission condemned unrest that has swept across the country, calling for the immediate restoration of peace.

Zimbabwe is aiming to vaccinate 1 million people against Covid-19 in the next two weeks, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said on Tuesday as he extended tough lockdown measures by another 14 days.

News24 has appointed seasoned journalist Lynsey Chutel to head up its Africa desk.

Botswana has more than 200 billion tons of untapped coal reserves and is developing six new coal mines. With banks shying away from the industry, the country has turned to investors from the largest global coal consumer - China

Two former Ivory Coast presidents and longterm political rivals, Laurent Gbagbo and Henri Konan Bedie, on Sunday said they were uniting in opposition to current head of state Allasane Ouattara.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity Party won the most seats in Ethiopia's parliamentary election, the election board said.

A suicide car bomb targeting a government convoy exploded at a busy junction in Somalia's capital, killing at least eight people, an eyewitness told Reuters.

Militants killed at least 45 people in an attack on the town of Faru in north west Nigeria, residents and a hospital worker said.

Rwanda deployed 1 000 troops to Mozambique’s troubled north, while southern African leaders are still discussing the deployment of a Standby Force.

Seven UN peacekeepers have been injured when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device in central Mali, the United Nations peacekeeping mission announced.

Construction of a new plant in Senegal to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines is expected to begin later this year, and the facility should produce 25 million doses per month by the end of 2022, the financers of the project said on Friday.