That's all from the BBC Africa Live page today. Keep up-to-date with what's happening across the continent by listening to the Africa Today podcast or checking the BBC News website.

A reminder of today's wise words:

There has been a lively discussion on our BBC Facebook page, external about the proverb’s meaning:

Mahmut, living in Ankara in Turkey, contacted by WhatsApp with his interpretation:   

Click here to send us your African proverbs.   

And we leave with this photo of athletes from South Sudan, part of the refugee athletes who qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics, and their training partners during a jogging session today at their camp in Ngong township near Kenya's capital, Nairobi:

Image source, Reuters

Heavy downpours in Ghana's capital city Accra have caused widespread flooding today.

The city is still recovering from the deadly floods of June 2015 when around 100 people were killed when the petrol station that they were sheltering in following floods exploded.

Collins Pobee, from Modern Photos Ltd, used a drone to capture the extent of the flooding around Kwame Nkrumah Circle, where the deep flood water brought traffic to a halt:

Image source, Collins Pobee

Image source, Collins Pobee

Image source, Collins Pobee

Image source, Reuters

An award-winning floating school that provided classes to children on a lagoon in Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos, has collapsed during heavy rains.

It had been out of use since March and no-one was injured.

"The structure collapsed at around 10:00 on Tuesday following a rainstorm," the school's head teacher Noah Shemede, told the AFP news agency.

He said 58 students who had been taught there had been relocated to the main school nearby.

Architect Kunle Adeyemi said the building was a prototype which had been used "intensively" over the last three years and a new building would be constructed to replace it.

Image source, AFP

Rana Jawad
BBC North Africa correspondent

Libyan armed forces in the west of the country have made significant gains in the on-going battle for the central city of Sirte, which is controlled by the so-called Islamic State.

The battle for the city began last month but the fighting intensified in recent days.

Image source, Reuters

Libya still has rival, regional administrations and armed forces in the east and west of the country, with each battling extremist militants in their territories.  

A coastguard commander allied to forces in Tripoli told the BBC his men were now positioned across the city’s coastline to prevent any militants from escaping.

He also said they fired missiles from the sea targeting at least four key positions held by militants there, including the port. 

A spokesman for the ground forces described the fighting against IS forces today as "guerrilla warfare".

He says they are on the fringes of residential areas by the city centre, but sniper fire and explosive devices planted by IS are slowing down the advance.

Nick Cavell
BBC Africa Sport

Benin's hopes of qualifying for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations finals look like they are over - a court in the country's capital Porto Novo has prevented proposed elections for a new football federation president and executive committee from going ahead today. 

The court has postponed the polls indefinitely as they upheld a complaint by 20 of the country's football clubs - who argued the current normalisation committee had violated the statutes of Benin Football Federation. 

The Confederation of African Football had set a deadline of Saturday for election to be held or the ban from global football would continue - meaning a proposed 2017 Nations Cup qualifier against Equatorial Guinea will be cancelled and the Squirrels will be eliminated from qualifying for Gabon 2017. 

Benin were banned in May by football's world governing body Fifa after a similar court ruling had earlier stopped elections from happening.

Image source, Getty Images

Sophie Ribstein
BBC Africa, Johannesburg

A police officer is murdered every four days in South Africa, according to the latest statistics released by the police services.

Since the beginning of the year, 37 police officers have been killed in South Africa and 712 have been attacked, the vast majority while on duty.

Violent crime has been on the rise for the past three years.

Commentators say that police officers are becoming more vulnerable as there is a sharp decline in the quality and resources of crime intelligence services.

These figures come as it was reported this week that acting police boss Khomotso Phahlane was attacked by robbers while he was at a spa in Johannessburg with his wife.

He sustained minor injuries after he was caught up in crossfire in a suspected robbery.

Image source, AFP

Image source, EFCC

A banker in the Nigerian city of Lagos has been sentenced to three years in jail for stealing from the account of a client who had died.

Olawale Garuba, who was accused of conspiring to steal 30m naira ($150,700, £104,200) from the customer, initially pleaded not guilty but changed his plea to guilty earlier this month, Nigeria’s anti-corruption body, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), said in a statement. 

Despite the remorse of the convict, Justice Oluwatoyin Ipaye said that she had no sympathy for him as he compromised his position as a banker “to steal from a deceased customer whose money would have been used by the family she left behind”, the statement said. 

The convict allowed his greed to overcome him and risk losing the job that thousands of job seekers are craving to get, she added.

Garuba was found guilty on 13 of the 18 charges and sentenced to three years imprisonment on each count – a total of 39 years, which are to run concurrently from the date of his detention last July. 

Image source, AFP

Women in Kenya seem to be the biggest causalities in yesterday’s budget as make-up is set to go up in price, Kenya's Nairobi News reports, external.

From next year, there will be a 10% excise duty on all cosmetic products. 

Kenya's cosmetics industry is estimated to be worth 6.4bn Kenyan shillings [$63m, £43m] meaning the anticipated collections could be more than 300m shillings, the Standard newspaper reports, external.

Get Involved: Are you in Kenya? What do you make of the move? 

Ethiopia's government has denied reports that it soldiers were killed in an attack on an African Union base, north of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

Islamist militant group al-Shabab said it had killed 60 Ethiopian soldiers in the attack this morning.

Somalia's Security Minister Abdirisak Omar Mohamed then told state-run Radio Muqdisho that nine Ethiopian soldiers were killed and six others injured.

But Getachew Redda, spokesperson for the Ethiopian government, told the BBC's Focus on Africa radio programme that the militants were heavily armed but they didn't inflict much damage:

Image source, AFP

Matthew Davies
Editor, BBC Africa Business Report

Bill Gates is to donate 100,000 chickens to poor families in sub-Saharan Africa (see earlier entry).

Image source, Getty Images/BBC

You can't fault the sentiment of the Microsoft billionaire.

Giving away thousands of chickens in an effort to alleviate poverty is a noble gesture in itself. But the plan throws up a few questions.

As the chicken population increases, where is the feed going to come from? Will more arable land have to be given over to growing chicken feed?

Also, with more chickens on the market, simple demand/supply economics suggests the average price of a chicken would fall.

There's also the issue of dumping.

The US, the European Union and Brazil are accused of selling chickens into African markets at prices way below what local farmers can afford to sell them for.

But all this doesn't mean that Mr Gates' plan shouldn't be tried. If there's even a small chance of success it needs to be done.

Nay-sayers and cynics may flap and cluck about such a plan, but at least when it comes to helping Africa's poor, Bill Gates has once again proved that he isn't chicken.

Kenya is adamant it will continue with its multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects despite neighbouring countries abandoning plans to join them. 

Uganda and Rwanda have chosen to do business with Tanzania despite initially signing deals with Kenya. 

So what has gone wrong for Kenya? 

BBC Focus on Africa's Emmanuel Igunza reports.  

Read more on The race to become East Africa biggest port.

Martin Patience
BBC News, Nigeria correspondent

Image source, AFP

Two international airlines are pulling out of Nigeria as the country grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades.

Spanish airline Iberia cancelled all its flights last month and the US carrier United Airlines says it will suspend its daily service at the end of June.

The carriers say falling demand for flights and currency restrictions are behind their decisions.  

This is the latest example of the economic crisis affecting Africa’s largest economy.

The plunge in global oil prices has cut Nigeria’s growth and led to a shortage of foreign currency reserves.

Last year, the government introduced strict currency controls to ensure that foreign reserves were available for what it deemed priority sectors – which did not include the airlines. 

It is now reported that up to $1bn (£691m) of the industry’s earnings may be trapped in the country.

Several other international airlines - including British airways and Emirates - will continue flying to Nigeria.

Nine African Union soldiers were killed and six others injured during an attack by Islamist militant group al-Shabab on one of their bases, Somali Security Minister Abdirisak Omar Mohamed has told state-run Radio Muqdisho.

He also told the broadcaster that 240 militants had been killed during the attack in Halgan, north of Mogadishu.

Al-Shabab says it has killed 60 soldiers during the attack, while the AU Mission in Somalia (Amisom) has not said whether any of its soldiers have died.

Local residents told the BBC that they had heard a huge bang followed by heavy gunfire at the African Union base.

Al-Shabab has also targeted Amisom bases in the past year run by troops from Burundi, Uganda and Kenya.

Image source, AP

Image source, Special Court for Sierra Leone

The Special Court for Sierra Leone says , externalan inquest will be conducted to determine the factors surrounding the death of 44-year-old war crimes convict Alex Tamba Brima (see entry below).

Here's what we know about the 44-year-old former rebel commander:

• Known at "Gullit" after a Dutch football star
• From Kono District, he joined the army in 1985 and rose to the rank of staff sergeant
• He was part of the group of soldiers, known as the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) that staged the 25 May 1997 coup
• Was made a public liaison officer and served on the AFRC’s supreme council
• Found guilty in 2007 on 11 counts, including for acts of terrorism, collective punishments, extermination, murder, rape, and for the use of child soldiers.
• He was serving his sentence at Mpanga Prison in Rwanda.

Umaru Fofana
BBC Africa, Freetown

Sierra Leone war crimes convict Alex Tamba Brima has died aged 44.

He was serving a 50-year jail term in Rwanda after being convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2007.

Court spokesman Peter Andersen said his wife was by his side when he died at a King Faisal Hospital in Kigali.

Brima was a senior commander of a group of rebel soldiers that toppled the government in 1997 during the country's civil war..

The Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) then formed an alliance with the notorious Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.  

Image source, AFP

Are you an unemployed graduate in Nigeria and fancy a job teaching?

Then start sprucing up your CV as an online portal will soon be accepting applications for 500,000 teaching positions at primary and secondary schools across the country.

The scheme, called N-Power Teach, is part of a programme to tackle youth unemployment promised by President Muhammadu Buhari during his election campaign last year. 

Graduates will be paid $115 (£79.53) a month and will be given computer devices with the latest software for teaching.

The BBC’s Naziru Mikailu in Abuja says it is a huge venture, and previous schemes by other governments have failed in the past.

But Mr Buhari's administration says it has provided adequate funding for the programme in this year's budget, despite its shrinking revenue, he reports.

The npower.gov.ng, external portal opens on Sunday.

There is "insufficient evidence" to charge anyone from MI6 with involvement in the rendition of two men and their families to Libya, UK prosecutors say.

Ex-Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhaj says Britain's intelligence agency helped to arrange his and his wife's rendition - saying they were covertly taken from Thailand to Libya.

Sami al-Saadi and his family were also sent to Libya in 2004, where he was allegedly tortured.

Prosecutors said UK officials did not transfer or ill-treat alleged victims.

Their lawyers claimed it was a joint CIA and MI6 operation to help Col Gaddafi round up his enemies.  

Mr Belhaj's wife Fatima Boudchar, had been trying to seek asylum in the UK when they were taken from Bangkok to Tripoli in 2004.

She was pregnant at the time of her detention and transfer to Libya and spent four months in a Libyan prison.

Speaking in her first television interview, she told the BBC: "My hands and legs were tied and my eyes were covered. They injected me with something. I didn't know where I was going.

"I was six months' pregnant. I was so scared that I was going to die. "

For more read the BBC News story.

Image source, Reuters

Former Wimbledon champion Bob Hewitt has lost his appeal in South Africa to reduce his six-year sentence for raping underage girls.

The 76-year-old had been granted bail in May 2015 after his conviction on two counts of rape and one of sexual assault of girls he coached in South Africa the 1980s and 1990s.

His lawyer had argued that the sentence should be reduced because of the former tennis star's old age and poor health.

But three Supreme Court of Appeal judges said this had already been considered.

“You must not overlook that the trial court could have imposed life imprisonment [on Hewitt for the rape of a minor],” Judge Mandisa Maya said.

In April, Australian-born Hewitt was expelled from the International Tennis Hall of Fame because of his conviction.  

Image source, Getty Images

... asks Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates in his most recent blog post, external.

So the billionaire has promised to donate 100,000 chickens to families in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa:

Mr Gates said a farmer breeding five hens could earn more than $1,000 (£690) a year. The poverty line, external is about $700 (£484).  

BBC Africa Business Report's Lerato Mbele recently interviewed a chicken farmer in Mozambique, who complained that imported poultry, mainly from the US and Brazil, was making it difficult for local producers to compete.

Click here to watch the full interview with Fatima Mussagy.

Milton Nkosi
BBC Africa

An airport built on a remote south Atlantic island by the UK government at the cost £285m ($412m) of public money cannot be used at the moment because planes landing there are blown off course, according to a spending watchdog.

National Audit Office report found that safety concerns relating to wind shear and turbulence have led to the mothballing of the airport. 

Plans to open the cliff-top landing strip in May were postponed indefinitely.

The development on St Helena was approved in 2010 by the UK's Department of International Development. 

It was one of the biggest single government investments ever made in a UK overseas territory. The island is famous for being the place of Napoleon's exile and death.

Click here to watch footage of a commercial plane landing at the windy airport.

Image source, SAMS