BBC Monitoring

Ethiopia has dismissed reports that it barred the Eritrean national team from competing in a forthcoming Cecafa regional football tournament, state TV says.

A spokesman for the Ethiopian Football Federation said that it lacked the legal authority to ban other teams from participating, but added that Eritrea was not included on the list of participating countries provided by Cecafa organisers.

Eritrea's information minister tweeted his reaction on Wednesday:

In the last five years, more than 50 Eritrean players have defected while on international duty, including 10 last month, following a World Cup qualifying match in Botswana.

Cefaca kicks off on 21 November, finishing on 5 December.  

Image source, Trendsmap

If Tokyo Sexwale wins the presidency of Fifa next year, he's going to have to get used to jokes about his name until the world learns how to pronounce it: "Se -khwa - lei".

His surname is trending among Twitter users around the world after the South African was cleared by world football body Fifa to run for Sepp Blatter's job:

The BBC's Milton Nkosi explains the South African's full name is Mosima Gabriel Sexwale. "Tokyo" is his nickname from his days as a young karate enthusiast.

A reporter from South Africa's public broadcaster SABC tweets from Lesotho:

Milton Nkosi
BBC Africa, Johannesburg

Image source, bbc

People in the South African community of Coronationville near Johannesburg are queuing for water from a provided tank by the municipality.

The water restrictions come as the country experiences the worst drought in more than 30 years in South Africa:  

Somali government spokesman Abdisalam Aato, who’s been attending the EU-Africa migration summit, says he made several attempts to get to Europe in the 1990s.

Each try ended with him being arrested in an African country and he eventually gave up trying when his money ran out.

“Looking back - I was lucky enough to stop at Mozambique. But the situation that our kids are going through, our youths are going through right now, of leaving Somalia, taking a boat and all that, it's not worth it. It's a deadly journey," he told the BBC's World Update.

“I would say it's best for them to stay in their country, and slowly but surely we will fix this problem and we will fix our country."

Liberia's football chief, Musa Bility, has been giving his response to BBC Africa's Piers Edwards about being ruled out as a candidate for the Fifa presidency following integrity checks:

The UN says it is investigating new allegations of sexual abuse by its peacekeepers in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Three teenage girls, aged between 14 and 17 and living in displacement camps, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that they had sex with peacekeepers from the Democratic Republic of Congo over several weeks, resulting in at least two pregnancies. 

Diane Corner, deputy head of the UN mission in CAR (Minusca) told the BBC’s Newsday programme that they are determined to establish the truth and tackle the problem. 

She said the mission was already investigating 19 cases of alleged abuse, eight of which involved children. 

“There is no doubt that there is a systemic issue here… because virtually every UN mission is affected by this problem,” she said.

The UN chief was arguing for a change in how troops were disciplined as at the moment contributing countries are responsible for the conduct of their troops, she added.