Image source, afp/getty

The head of a Democratic Republic of Congo army operation tackling rebels in the country's east says it has freed 26 people held by a Uganda-based rebel group, AP news agency reports. 

Cpt Mak Hazukay Mongba said the army had freed the hostages over the past several days. 

Some of the freed hostages said the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels wanted the Congolese army to recognise that they controlled parts of Beni. 

Omar Kavota, director of a local rights group, said the rebel group presented a regional threat because it aimed to take control in Uganda. 

The ADF rebels are among scores of armed groups vying for control in mineral-rich eastern DR Congo and are blamed for killing nearly 700 civilians since October 2014. 

Image source, AFP

The government in Rwanda has branded as inadequate the apology recently issued by the Catholic Church in the country over the 1994 genocide in which at least 800,000 people were killed, the AFP news agency reports. 

Many Catholic priests and members of the church were put on trial both in Rwanda and at the UN special tribunal in Arusha for their roles in the slaughter. 

An apology letter signed by Rwandan bishops was circulated last Sunday.

Bishop Philippe Rukamba, chair of the Catholic Episcopal Conference of Rwanda, later clarified that the apology was in the name of individuals and not the church, saying the church as an institution had played no role in the genocide. 

This prompted the Rwandan government to reply:  

The government added that the bishops' letter highlighted an unwillingness from the Catholic Church to honestly recognise its moral and legal responsibilities with regard to the genocide.

We look at the path BBC AFOTY 2016 nominee Sadio Mane took to building his successful career, starting at FC Metz before ending up with a big-money move to Liverpool.

Mane joins Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Andre Ayew, Riyad Mahrez and Yaya Toure on the five-man shortlist for the BBC award.

The winner will be decided by fans from across the world, who have until 18:00 GMT on 28 November to vote for their choice.

Make your vote here.

Image source, AFP

About 300 students in Sudan took to the streets in the capital, Khartoum, to protest against a government's decision to increase fuel prices, AFP reports. 

Earlier this month,officials announced that petrol and diesel at the pump will cost 30% more, as a result of chronic fuel shortage linked to a scarcity of foreign currency in Sudan. 

But students are angry at the price hike and intended to pressure the government into rolling it back. 

Their protest was broken up by riot police which arrested 26 people, including 12 women, AFP says. 

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

Canada’s prime minster has just tweeted from the first stop on his first African tour since taking office in 2015:

The BBC’s Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, said Justin Trudeau laid out his government’s support for empowering women in Liberia.

He then went off to play football with some schoolchildren in the Liberian capital:

The 44-year-old Canadian leader's next stop is Madagascar, for the summit of the International Organisation of the Francophonie (OIF), a French equivalent of the Commonwealth.  

South African police say they have arrested a Hong Kong-bound Chinese man with 18 rhino horns hidden in his luggage, the AFP news agency reports.

He was detained on Wednesday at Johannesburg's OR Tambo International Airport after an anonymous tip-off, a statement today said:

The horns, weighing 43kg (95lb), were valued at around $467,000 (£375,000), AFP reports.

The man is due to appear in court on Friday.  

The poaching of rhinos in Africa has been driven by demand for their horns in some Asian countries for their purported medicinal properties.  

Image source, AFP

Image source, AFP

Twenty light aircraft have been impounded in Ethiopia, the director general of the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority has told the BBC’s Emmanuel Igunza in Addis Ababa. 

Wosenyele Hungnall said they had crossed illegally into the Ethiopian airspace from Sudan and landed in Gambella in the south-west of the country.

The pilots have been detained and investigators are travelling to the area.

At this stage is not clear how many people have been detained, our reporter says.

Earlier, organisers of the Vintage Air Rally, an event for aircraft built before 1949 to fly between Crete and Cape Town, said the event had been temporarily stopped because of paperwork problems in Ethiopia.

Planes and phones had been impounded so communication was difficult, they said. 

One person managed to get hold of Vintage Air Rally staff to say that everyone was being treated well and they were being kept at a hotel near the airport.

Maurice Kirk, the British pilot who was reported missing yesterday, was one of almost 60 people involved, the event organisers said.

Diplomats were trying to resolve the situation, Vintage Air Rally said. 

Kenya's eDaily, external has published an audio recording said to be of an unidentified Kenyan woman frustrating the efforts of a conman trying to get her to reveal her bank account access details.

The alleged conman informs her that her pin has been upgraded and then asks her for her old pin number.

“I know the pin. It is what I am using currently,” the woman says.

“Kindly share with me the digits of the old pin,” the fraudster says.

The woman then says she will not share her pin over the phone before going on to say: “I have forgotten my pin. I have several mobile phone lines."

The fraudster eventually gives up.  

Votes for the 2016 BBC African Footballer of the Year are coming in thick and fast.

But there are only five days left to cast your vote. Don't miss your chance to choose your favourite.

Who do you think is the best African footballer this season?

• Gabon’s goal-machine Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
• Technical-maestro Riyadh Mahrez of Algeria
• Lightening-quick Sadio Mane of Senegal
• Ghana’s midfield-maestro Andrew "Dede" Ayew
• Soccer strongman Yaya Toure of Ivory Coast.

Vote here before 18:00 GMT on Monday 28 November 2016.

Business came to a standstill in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, when a man said to look like Jesus was seen walking through the central business district early on Tuesday evening, the Star newspaper reports, external.

Dressed in a long robe, the long-haired, thick-bearded “Jesus” drew attention as he made his way barefoot through the streets, the paper says.

Kenyans on Twitter used the hashtag #JesusInNairobi to share their excitement:

A photo of one selfie with the unidentified man was widely shared: 

James Jeffrey
Addis Ababa

Image source, AFP

Twitter and Facebook have been blocked since a six-month state of emergency was imposed last month as the government tries to restore order across the country's two most populous regions of Oromia and Amhara.

There are also internet blackouts, primarily targeting mobile phone data, which is how most Ethiopians get online - and is for many residents of the capital, Addis Ababa, the most frustrating effect of the security clampdown.

The ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has singled out social media as playing a key role in the latest unrest which broke out in November 2015 and which resulted in millions of dollars' worth of damage across Oromia, the region where the protests began.

But internet restrictions may have less to do with silencing Ethiopians at home than with stymieing influence from abroad where those in the diaspora energetically follow and respond to events.

Read the full story here

BBC Monitoring
News from around the globe

Image source, Google

About 30 people have been killed in an ethnic conflict between two communities in eastern DR Congo's Tanganyika region, local station Radio Okapi, external reports.

Villagers fleeing the 21 November attack, who indicated the number of deaths including children could be higher, blamed the violence on members of the Twa ethnic group, also known as pygmies, who used bows and arrows to attack Muswaki village inhabited by ethnic Lubas. 

The village is situated 70km (44 miles) to the west of Kalemie, the region's main town.

"The pygmies killed 30 people whose bodies are still sprawled on the ground… There are people who have sustained arrow wounds currently at Nyemba Health Centre," said a primary school headteacher who was among the displaced villagers.

The headteacher said some victims fled into the forest with poisoned arrows lodged in their bodies.

Separately, two UN peacekeepers from Benin sustained arrow wounds during an attack on the UN refugee agency convoy by armed Luba fighters.

Last month at least 16 people were reported killed in a row between the same two ethnic groups near the town of Kabalo in the same region over a disputed tax on the sale of caterpillars.

Tensions between the hunter-gatherer pygmies and the Luba, a Bantu ethnic group, have caused hundreds of deaths over the past three years.  

Image source, Google

Osman Hassan
BBC Somali Service

Two schools in central Somalia suspected of radicalising students have been taken over by the authorities.

The pro-government Ahlu Sunna group, which is in control of the area, told the BBC that the pupils at the Gurmad primary and secondary schools in the town of Dhusamareb were being taught ideology promoting the Islamist al-Shabab group.

The two schools were being run by Garad, a non-governmental organisation. 

Abdirashid Hassan Sheikh, chairman of Garad, denied the accusations. 

Image source, AFP

The Trump and Brexit votes are a "nationalist backlash against Western liberalism" triggered by the consequences of Western military adventurism - something Africans should not still be putting up with, Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni says in a long article in the New Vision, external newspaper.

Mr Museveni said that while the US invasion of Afghanistan was justified following the 9/11 attacks, the invasion of Iraq and ousting of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi were not - and they have caused "human disasters" in the Middle East and Africa. 

Libya, previously a source of investment and employment for the rest of Africa, is now an exporter of arms and militancy, he said.

Allowing Western countries to attack Libya without an African response was a "betrayal" of Libya, the Ugandan leader said- even though he also said he was "caught by surprise" by the intervention.

To prevent such events in the future, he proposed an African version of the "Monroe doctrine" - a pact whereby interference with any part of Africa is viewed as a hostile act towards the continent as a whole.

Image source, Reuters

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who left office in 2007, has lashed out at the government's handling of the economy, Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper reports, external.

He said he understood the frustrations President Muhammadu Buhari felt at the problems he had inherited, but said his approach was wrong.

Mr Buhari, who took office in May 2015, wants to take out a $30bn (£25bn) loan so the money can be used for investment, especially in infrastructure.  

Mr Obasanjo, who supported Mr Buhari to become president, said the plan was misjudged:

Image source, AFP

Zimbabwe is to have separate ATMs for bond notes and US dollars, the country’s state-run Herald newspaper quotes the central bank governor as saying, external.

The bond notes, a cash substitute intended to be pegged in value to the US dollar, are expected to be introduced in the next few days.

John Mangudya, governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, insisted that he wanted to “maintain the multi-currency system”.

The governor also said specimens of the bond notes would be issued just before the bond notes went into circulation, to minimise the risk of counterfeit notes.

Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency in 2009 because of hyperinflation when the highest denomination was a $100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar note - and prices would go up by millions from one hour to the next.

Many people fear the bond notes, being introduced to ease a cash shortage, will lead to a similar crisis.

Read more: Why Zimbabweans are sleeping outside banks

Image source, AFP

African Union (AU) Commission chair Nkosazana Dlamini has called on African and Arab member states to work together "in line with the principle of self-determination" to solve disagreements over Western Sahara, according to an AU statement.

It follows a mass walkout at yesterday's Africa-Arab summit in Equatorial Guinea's Malabo city. 

Morocco - which has de facto control over Western Sahara - objected to the presence of a delegation from the Polisario Front, which wants independence for the territory. The Moroccans were followed out by seven Arab nations and Somalia. 

Morocco wants to rejoin the AU, which recognises the Polisario-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as an independent state.

Read more: World's most remote film festival

Image source, AFP

A lost four-year-old girl from Ivory Coast, who travelled alone from North Africa to Italy, will be reunited with her mother after an extraordinary coincidence.  

Oumoh's mother took her from her father's family in Ivory Coast to save her from female genital mutilation.

But the pair were separated when Oumoh's mother left her with a friend in Tunis to fetch things from home.

When the friend had an opportunity to travel to Italy, she took Oumoh with her but then left the girl alone.

Oumoh was rescued at sea and brought to the Italian island of Lampedusa, where none of the boat's other passengers knew who she was.

"She was quite traumatised, and initially wouldn't speak or communicate," Marilena Cefala, the head of Lampedusa's reception centre, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Days later, another girl from Ivory Coast recognised a photo of Oumoh on Ms Cefala's phone while playing with it, and was able to identify the child's 31-year-old mother. 

A Facebook search took Ms Cefala to one of Oumoh's relatives in France, who passed on a phone number for her mother.

Read the BBC News story for more

A 72-year-old British pilot who went missing while attempting to fly a 1940s plane the length of Africa has been found alive, his son Charles Kirk has said.

Maurice Kirk was part of a vintage air rally flying from Crete to Cape Town.

A search and rescue operation was launched after the aircraft went missing on Monday somewhere between Sudan and Ethiopia.

Vintage Air Rally confirmed he has been found and said: "All participants including the hitherto 'missing' Maurice Kirk are safe and accounted for."

The pilot had continued to fly despite being asked to withdraw from the Vintage Air Rally event after two engine failures and a lack of navigational equipment.

Read the BBC News story for more.  

Students in Ghana's capital, Accra, have taken part in a fashion show in which all the models are blind or visually impaired. 

Watch this video of how they are trying to change perceptions: