We'll be back on Monday. In the meantime, keep up-to-date with news from across the continent on the Africa Today podcast and on the BBC News website.

This has been our African proverb of the day:

Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page to send your proverb.

We leave you with this photo of Ghanaian artist El Anatsui posing in front his installation from our selection of the best African pictures this week.

Image source, AFP

South Africa's Western Cape is not usually associated with Italian delicacies - but it is now with the production of mozzarella cheese, made, of course, from buffalo milk.

So, the BBC has visited a buffalo farm in Wellington see this new agricultural addition for itself.

Through the week we have been following young activists who are using social media to assert their rights. 

A new generation of activism has emerged.

The internet is helping people fight against leaders staying in power.

In the last of the series we look at what the future holds for Lucha, a campaign group in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

Young and Connected is BBC Africa's first WhatsApp series. It brings the story of the rise of groups challenging leaders who want to stay in power.

The Sahara-based jihadist group Ansar al-Dine have said they were behind an attack on a French army convoy in northern Mali on 8 March. 

The group's media group Rimah said some rockets were fired at a French military camp 60km (37 miles) east of Kidal, forcing them to retreat to the town. 

The statement said locals then plundered the camp.  

No-one appears to have been hurt. 

Earlier this month, Ansar al-Dine claimed a number of roadside bomb attacks against Minusma forces in Mali.

Image source, Getty Images

Justin Pearce
Angola analyst

Angola's President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has said he will step down in 2018 but there are questions over who could take his place.

The problem is there is no obvious successor. Mr dos Santos has run the ruling MPLA in a manner that rules out any challenge to his leadership.

With the wealth he has amassed, if he relinquishes power it has to be to someone who will keep the business interests in the family.

Since 2011, attention has turned to Manuel Vicente, the state oil company boss who was hurriedly elevated to vice-president, then to Mr Dos Santos' son Jose Filomeno, and most recently to his wealthy businesswoman daughter Isabel.

None of these people will find favour with an increasingly restless public, or with old timers at the ruling party MPLA, who will resent a political newcomer being appointed simply because of connections with the veteran leader.

So two years hence, the president might again present himself as the only appropriate candidate. 

But, aged 73, he must know the question cannot be put off forever.

Image source, AFP

Image source, PA

This week the inventor of a healthcare drone was announced as the winner of Africa's Next Einstein award.

The award aims to find the best scientific minds from across the continent and it has revealed these ingenious solutions to three problems:

Problem: Landfill sites are filling up

The inventor Moussa Thiam from Mali says that plastic can last up to 100 years so recycling can also make a low-cost material for paving.  

Solution: Turn plastic waste into paving 

Problem: Illiterate pregnant women miss out on life-saving information 

The inventor Sylvia Mukasa from Kenya says that many women have limited access to quality information, mainly due to literacy and language barriers.

Solution: Recorded mobile phone messages

And the winner is...

Problem: Bad roads stop people getting to hospital to do blood tests

Aeronautical engineer Moses Bangura from Sierra Leone says that there are often the facilities available for medical tests but bad roads and heavy traffic mean people don't have access to them.  

Solution: Send samples to clinics by drone

A student demonstration in Chad's second city of Moundou has been broken up by police, the AFP news agency reports.

The demonstration, over unpaid allowances, comes just a day after activists held a whistling protest in the capital, Ndjamena, calling for a fair election next month.

AFP reports that six students were arrested.

Protests are rare in Chad where Mr Deby has been president since 1990.

Image source, AFP

Sebastian Coe, the head of athletics' world governing body, has said that Ethiopian athletics is in "critical care" when it comes to improving its anti-doping programme.

There have been recent reports of some Ethiopian athletes failing drugs tests.  

He made the comments at a press conference that announced Russia's continues suspension from international competition over its anti-doping problems.

Lord Coe also mentioned Kenya and Morocco as countries of concern.

Kenya and Ethiopia are well known for producing some of the continent's best athletes.

Image source, AFP

Leaders are hanging on to power in places like Senegal, Burkina Faso and Congo Brazzaville.

But there's been a rise in young people using social media to challenge this.

The BBC's Maud Jullien met with one such group, called Lucha in the Democratic Republic of Congo for chapter six of our series Young and Connected:

Young and Connected is BBC Africa's first WhatsApp series. It brings the story of the rise of groups challenging leaders who want to stay in power or who are not accountable. 

We reported earlier that Angola's President Jose Eduardo dos Santos - in power since 1979 - has said he would step down in two years.

But the question is: Will he?

The BBC's former Angola reporter Justin Pearce told Focus on Africa radio that he was in Angola's capital, Luanda, in 2001 when Mr dos Santos said he was going to stand down at the next election.

Justin said that at the moment "we aren't very close to having a credible successor".

"It's quite a well worn dos Santos strategy to hint that something might change but then when it comes to the crunch there isn't an acceptable alternative so dos Santos puts himself forward again as the least bad option."

Image source, AFP

Musician Mulatu Astatke is known by some as the father of Ethio-jazz.

But BBC Africa's Hewete Haileselassie says that he is not very wekll known within his own country.

Hewete joins a discussion about the musician on the BBC's Fifth Floor programme - it also includes a clip of Mulatu arguing that Latin music came from Africa:

Photo credit: Alexis Maryon 

Niger's opposition leader Hama Amadou - who came second in last month's first round of voting in the presidential election - has been taken to hospital.

Mr Amadou was transferred from prison, where he is being held on baby trafficking charges, which he denies, arguing they are politically motivated.  

An opposition spokesman said Mr Amadou has eye problems and "was evacuated to hospital this morning for treatment," AFP quotes him as saying.

There have been conflicting reports about whether Mr Amadou will take part in the second run run-off vote, in which he is due to face incumbent President Mahamadou Issoufou.

Image source, AFP

South African Clinton Sybesma has sent us dramatic pictures of a man being caught hiding in the bushes in Kruger National Park:

Image source, Clinton Sybesma

Image source, Clinton Sybesma

Image source, Clinton Sybesma

Mr Sybesma took the pictures on Wednesday afternoon after he spotted what was going on as he was driving. 

He wrote on Facebook, external "BUSTED!!!! Kruger Park reaction team land and intercepted this suspected poacher in the vehicle behind me."

Despite reports of the South African mobile phone company MTN making an offer of $1.5bn (£1bn) to end its dispute with the Nigeria, the company says there has been no settlement.

It was fined $3.9bn for failing to cut off unregistered sim cards and has been negotiating a deal to resolve the problem.

MTN Nigeria released a statement saying:

Image source, AFP

The spokesman for South Sudan's president has said in response to a critical UN human rights report that government soldiers have not been involved in atrocities.

Ateny Wek Ateny told BBC Focus on Africa radio that it takes UN reports very seriously, but he said the claims that South Sudanese soldiers used rape as a weapon were not true as the soldiers are told to protect civilians and only fight other people in uniforms.

He said the report referred to militias allied to the government, but Mr Ateny said there were no militias fighting on the government side.

He alleged that the UN report "relies on those who are anti-government" which would explain the criticisms of the government.

You can hear the interview on the BBC World Service at 15:00 GMT.

Image source, AFP

A leader of Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda party - a junior partner in the government - has warned that the country doesn't have much time to sort out its economic problems.

In a long piece in the Financial Times, external Said Ferjani is quoted as saying: "If we don’t move fast, people will not wait and there will be chaos and Islamic State is next door in Libya.

“If the people don’t feel that the state belongs to them, if they feel marginalised, it is like you are pushing them into the lap of IS."

There was turmoil recently in the inland city of Kasserine with young people frustrated at the lack of economic change in the country since the revolution in 2011.

The FT quotes one graduate there who asked: "What [has] happened here since the revolution?... A minister came and laid down the cornerstone for an industrial zone, then nothing.”

The government urges people to have patience as structural economic change can be very slow, the FT reports.

Image source, AFP

In a country where homosexual acts are illegal, a music video about gay love was so controversial that Kenya's media watchdog tried to ban it. 

But as BBC Trending reports the censors attempt to stop people watching didn't quite go as planned.

Video Journalist Karen Chambers  

A South African man says his teenage son may have found part of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on a beach in Mozambique, reports AP news agency.

Casper Lotter said his son Liam found the piece on 30 December near the town of Xai Xai and returned to South Africa with it. 

The curved piece has a five-digit number on it.

Mr Lotter said his wife contacted Australian aviation authorities last week after another piece was found in Mozambique. 

He said the authorities said the number indicates it may belong to a Boeing 777.  

A South African Civil Aviation Authority spokesman said they will send the part to Australia to be examined.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 jet vanished while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014.

Image source, Blaine Alan Gibson

Image source, Getty images

We asked on Facebook, external if you believe the promise by Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos that he will stand down in 2018.

It got many onto the subject of why some leaders stay in power for so long:

And one Facebook post just says:

We wrote in our 09:11 and 10:06 posts that a UN report says, external South Sudan's government soldiers deliberately targeted civilians during the recent civil war. 

One of the grimmest incidents Reuters has picked out is that, external soldiers argued over whether or not to rape a six-year-old girl and ended up shooting her.

Between April and September 2015, the UN investigation said there were more than 1,300 reports of rapes in South Sudan's Unity State alone.  

Image source, Getty Images