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 our proverb of the day:

Click here to send your African proverb

And we leave you with this picture of children playing in the sea in Stone Town, Zanzibar:  

Jose Tembe
BBC Africa, Maputo

Mozambique’s tax authority has warned that anyone caught smuggling raw cashew nuts out of the country will be treated with “zero tolerance”.

Cashew nuts are one of Mozambique’s key exports - and the law does not allow their export if they are unprocessed.

Tax official Jeronimo Lopes said that last year his institution had seized 40 containers full of raw cashew nuts in the port of Nacala thought to have been bound to India, the main buyer of raw cashews.    

Image source, AFP

Pilots detained in Ethiopia while taking part in the Vintage Air Rally (see earlier post) are now free to continue their journey, Reuters news agency quotes the event's organisers as saying.

"Just been resolved now... Kenya tomorrow!" rally organiser Sam Rutherford texted.

The aviators are retracing a historic flight route along the length of Africa in 24 vintage planes.

Kenya's prison band has been filmed in action welcoming guests at the city's international airport today by CNN's Nairobi correspondent:

Randy Joe Sa'ah
BBC Africa, Bamenda

Life is returning to normal in north-west Cameroon after bloody protests against the use of French in courts and schools earlier this week.

In Bamenda, the main city in English-speaking parts of Cameroon, I could hear music blasting from a makeshift disco and the streets have been bustling with commercial activities and vehicles.

Riot police could still be seen keeping watch as city council workers cleared up tyres burnt by demonstrators. 

A young man, commenting on the return to calm, told me: 

English-speakers have long complained that they face discrimination. 

Areas controlled by Britain and France joined to form Cameroon after the colonial powers withdrew in the 1960s.  

Image source, Reuters

A committee of South Sudan MPs says the country might be better off stopping oil production than continuing to pay 80% of the oil revenue to its northern neighbour Sudan, through which the oil is piped, Eye Radio, external in Juba reported.

The payments represent “inappropriately designed” transitional financial assistance to Sudan, the parliamentary Committee of Economy and Finance said.

Under the 2012 agreement, Sudan gets $15 (£12) per barrel in transitional financial assistance. Another $9 per barrel is paid for transport through Sudan.

Sudan's oil reserves were reduced by more than half with the independence in 2011 of South Sudan.  

Average oil prices in 2012 - when the deal with Sudan was struck - were much higher, meaning South Sudan made far more per barrel.

South Sudan is currently producing 130,000 barrels per day, the Ministry of Petroleum says.

Ali Dia - a Senegalese man with dubious credentials who mysteriously found his way into an English premiership game in the 1990s and was later branded a conman - says he has been upset by how he's been characterised by the media all these years. 

Dia's story began, external on 23 November 1996, when he appeared as a substitute for Southampton in a Premier League match. 

Dia performed so poorly that his manager, Graeme Souness, removed him before full time.

He was subsequently released by the club and accused of perpetrating the most sensational scam in football history. 

He allegedly made up a connection with Liberian great George Weah to trick Southampton into signing him. 

For the last 20 years, that has been what the world thought of him. 

Now a Bleacher Report , externaljournalist has followed Dia's trail, meeting his parents in Dakar, his son in France and speaking to him on the phone. 

It is the first time he has given his side of the story. He told the reporter: 

Disputing the official version of the Southampton debacle, he said:

Image source, Kelly Naqi

Milton Nkosi
BBC Africa, Johannesburg

Image source, AFP

Cyril Ramaphosa’s chances of becoming South Africa’s next president received a boost today when he won the support of the country’s biggest trade union.

A wealthy businessman - and a former trade unionist - he has been President Jacob Zuma’s deputy since 2014.

At an executive meeting today in Johannesburg, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said it wanted Mr Ramaphosa to succeed Mr Zuma as head of the African National Congress (ANC) when the governing party chooses its next leader next year.

Cosatu does not have voting power in the ANC, but boasts about two million members.

President Zuma is under pressure from within the ANC to resign following allegations of government corruption.

Mr Zuma denies any wrongdoing and is believed to want his former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who is currently chair of African Union commission, to take over from him. 

Regina Mziwanda
BBC Africa, Dar es Salaam

Image source, AP

African giant-pouched rats are being used to detect tuberculosis (TB) at a laboratory in Tanzania, the first of its kind in East Africa.

One rat can make a diagnosis by sniffing the saliva of 100 patients and give results within 20 minutes, officials say. Other methods can take about two weeks to get a final result.

The technique, developed by Belgian organisation Apopo, external, has helped detect many TB patients who were previously diagnosed negative, trainer Dr Fidelis John says.

The rats have also been trained to detect mines and sniff out smuggled pangolin remains and hardwood timber. 

More than 10,000 samples previously deemed negative have been diagnosed as showing TB by this method, Dr John says.

The laboratory is currently screening more than 200 samples a day from clinics in Dar es Salaam and is delivering results back to clinics within 24 hours.

TB is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide, the World Health Organization says.

Kenya's health ministry has confirmed an ongoing outbreak of chickenpox in Mombasa and the capital, Nairobi, the country's Daily Nation, external newspaper reports.

People have been advised to limit contact with those affected to stop the disease spreading.

The number of cases in Mombasa surged in September to more than 1,000 from a previous level of about 500 since January, the newspaper reported. Most were young children.

Image source, BBC Sport

Fifa is facing a lawsuit in a Swiss court over regulations that ban the transfer of players under the age of 18.

The case was been filed at the Zurich Commercial Court on behalf of an unnamed 17-year-old African player and his parents, who say that the rules make Fifa's transfer regulations unlawful.

A spokesman for Zurich law firm Nater Dallafior Rechtsanwaelte, which has brought the case, said in a statement that the player, who had represented his country at youth level, was unable to move to a club in the European Union because of the rules.

"Thereby, he and his family miss the probably unique chance of a professional and social advancement," said the statement issued on Thursday.

Fifa bans the international transfers of players under the age of 18 unless their parents have emigrated for reasons not connected to football or both the player and club are based within 50km (30 miles) of a national border.

Read the whole story here

Image source, AFP

A new witness for investigators probing the disappearance in Ivory Coast of a foreign journalist, Guy Andre Kieffer, says he knows where the reporter's body is buried.

Mr Kieffer was a French-Canadian journalist who disappeared while investigating allegations of corruption in Ivory Coast's cocoa industry under former president Laurent Gbagbo.

So far, little has been found to establish whether Mr Kieffer is indeed dead.

Now, according to Radio France Inter, a French national in Ivory Coast told investigating judge Cyril Paquaux that Mr Kieffer was buried in a basement in the south of Abidjan, Ivory Coast's main city.

Ivorian officials are keen to show they are cooperating with the French investigation as they want to clear suspicions that they were obstructing the process.

Colleagues of two journalists in Botswana reportedly suspended from a private radio station over an interview with a controversial US pastor Steven Anderson have marched through the capital, Gaborone, demanding that they be reinstated:

Image source, Thalefang Charles

Image source, Thalefang Charles

In a statement the Botswana Media and Allied Workers Union said that breakfast show host Reginald Richardson and his producer Keikantse Shumba were just doing their jobs.

The union accused Gabz FM of “violating their employee’s civil right of freedom of expression and information”. 

During the interview, conducted in September, Mr Anderson, who runs the Faithful Word Baptist Church in the US state of Arizona, said that homosexuals should be stoned.

After the show, he was deported on the orders of the president. 

According to Botswana’s Weekend Post newspaper, another issue that prompted the journalists’ suspension, external was a complaint by the governing Botswana Democratic Party that it wasn’t given the right to reply over an issue covered by the breakfast show. 

Image source, AP

Only medical students are tending to sick people at public health centres in Burkina Faso as a doctors and nurses strike in which minimal care is not provided continues.

In a desperate attempt to save lives, the government has requisitioned army health workers though most patients were still languishing without care, AP news agency reported.

A third of patients seeking treatment at the main hospital in the capital, Ouagadougou, were leaving without treatment, a spokesman said.

Burkina Faso's health minister has strongly condemned the strike, which is due to end on Friday, saying some workers should have continued working. 

The strike also comes amid an outbreak of dengue fever, which already has sickened more than 1,000 people and killed at least 20 people. 

It also the season when there are most meningitis cases in the country. 

Idris Situma
BBC Swahili, Nairobi

Image source, AFP

The government of  Kenya has launched an online portal targeting a million unemployed young people in a bid to tap into the big global outsourcing industry.

Dubbed the "Ajira Digital Programme", the portal is supposed to bridge the gap between the demand for skills and the demand for jobs in the country.

At the core of the programme is a plan to open digital centres with free internet to boost the employment drive.

The network of youth empowerment centres in each of the 47 regional counties will be transformed into work stations with the government providing appropriate working spaces, skills and tools to enable youth across Kenya to work online. 

The government will finance acquisition of mobile digital gadgets.  

Some 350 freshly trained youth officers will introduce and mentor the youth on the multi-billion dollar global outsourcing industry. 

About 87% of Kenya’s population access the internet via mobile. There were nearly seven million broadband subscribers.  

Some 17% of Kenyans do not have jobs, according to the latest World Bank report.

Should men be stay-at-home dads?

We got a mixed response on the streets of Lagos when we asked about the role of fathers.

We'll be talking about the so-called new African dads on Focus on Africa on BBC World at 17:30 GMT, ahead of a discussion this Friday at London's Southbank Centre.

See the video on Facebook here, external

Idris Situma
BBC Swahili, Nairobi

Image source, Getty Images

In the space of little over a month, Kenya Airways has lost both its chief executive and its group chairman.  

First Denis Awori was forced to step aside as chairman to avert a potential strike by the airline’s pilots.  

Now Mbuvi Ngunze, who has been chief executive since 2014, is resigning.

The Kenya Airways board did not give any reasons for his resignation.

The new board chairman, Michael Joseph, promised to find a suitable replacement within three months.

Kenya Airways has declared record-breaking losses for the second-year running, losing $258m (£207m) this financial year, and almost the same amount the previous year.  

That was blamed on a failed expansion strategy.

Somalia is in the midst of a process to choose its new leaders even though the country remains too dangerous to hold a national election.

Watch how a unique system is being used, with women given a prominent role:

Read more: Somalia's rocky road to democracy  

Milton Nkosi
BBC Africa, Johannesburg

The South African Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago has announced that the repo rate will remain unchanged at 7% - a huge relief to millions of South Africans who are feeling the pinch of the subdued economic climate in the country. 

Mr Kganyago said the latest forecast is for 0% growth in South Africa during 2016. 

The repo rate is the rate at which the central bank lends money to banks and is used by central banks to control inflation.

The prime lending rate stays at 10.5%, Mr Kganyago said.

But the news is not all good - next month the credit ratings agencies will give their reports and there is a fear that they might downgrade the country's debt to junk status. 

Unemployment increased to 27% this week, the highest in 13 years.

Image source, BBC Sport

Spanish prosecutors are seeking a prison term of more than 10 years for former Barcelona striker Samuel Eto'o for alleged tax crimes committed when he played for the Catalan club.

In addition to a sentence of 10 years and six months, prosecutors are also demanding a fine of $15.1 million for the four counts of tax fraud for supposedly defrauding Spain's tax authority of almost $4 million from 2006-09, according to court documents released Thursday.

Prosecutors are seeking the same punishment for the player's representative at the time, Jose Maria Mesalles Mata.

The administrator of a company that facilitated the deals, Manuel de Jesus Lastre Abreu, is facing more than six years in prison and a fine of $2.3 million.

Prosecutors also want Eto'o to relinquish any possible fiscal incentives for a long period.

Eto'o and his lawyers could not be immediately contacted for comment, but in the past the player denied wrongdoing, saying he was not directly involved in his tax matters.

Read the full story here