The BBC's Clarisse Fortune in the Senegal's capital, Dakar, says Adama Barrow has left his residency to go to the airport to catch a plane to go home.

Correction: An earlier version of this entry said the plane had taken off.

The BBC's Efrem Gebreab in Senegal's capital, Dakar, has snapped this line of motocycle, which will make up the motorcade taking Gambian President Adama Barrow to the airport:

Mr Barrow is expected to fly back to The Gambia to take up his new role as president a week after being sworn in at a ceremony at the Gambian embassy in Dakar.

A BBC reporter in The Gambia says people are very excited to welcome Adama Barrow home from Senegal as their new president:

Another journalist tweeted this photo from the scene:

Umaru Fofana
BBC Africa, Banjul

Swiss authorities have taken The Gambia's former Interior Minister Ousmane Sonko into custody as he sought asylum there. 

He is accused of torture-related offenses in The Gambia. 

As one of the longest-serving members of ex-President Yahya Jammeh's regime, he was also head of police but fell out with his boss in November last year.  

BBC Monitoring
News from around the globe

Image source, Justin Purefoot

Fourteen miners are trapped after a gold mine shaft collapsed in north-western Tanzania. 

The workers, who include one Chinese and 13 Tanzanians, were buried in rubble 38m (124ft 6in) underground at 03:00 local time at a site owned by a Chinese company, the Swahili-language daily Mwananchi reports.

According to the country's privately owned ITV TV, rescue operations are currently under way at the pit near the town of Geita.

Geita Regional Commissioner Ezekiel Kyunga, who is at the scene, told the state-owned Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation TV that he believed they would be rescued alive:

In March last year five miners died at another site in the region after being trapped while prospecting for gold.   

Wanyama wa Chebusiri
BBC Africa

Image source, AFP

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has announced that it will resume its operations in Somalia before April.

MSF left the country three years ago because of attacks on its staff.

The organisation had been running medical programmes in Somalia for 22 years.

These included maternal health, immunisation campaigns and malnutrition treatment for thousands of children affected by decades of civil war and drought.

Image source, AFP

Lawyers for more than 40,000 Nigerian villagers will appeal against a UK court judgment barring them from suing oil giant Shell (see earlier entry).

The Leigh Day law firm said that Mr Justice Peter Fraser had made the judgment at an early stage in the litigation, before any documents were disclosed and without hearing oral evidence from witnesses about the relationship between Royal Dutch Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary. 

The Ogale and Bille communities in the Niger Delta allege that they have suffered systematic and ongoing oil pollution for years because of Shell’s operations.

Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi, traditional ruler of the Ogale Community, said he was “disappointed but not discouraged” by the judgement, the AFP agency reports.

Mr Okpabi told AFP in November that it would be difficult to win in a Nigeria court as he alleged the legal system there was corrupt.

Several mining companies have set up in Malawi to exploit natural resources such as uranium and coal. However, they have been slow to respond to growing concerns that rivers are becoming polluted by their operations. 

Watch Nancy Kacungira's report from northern Malawi, where villagers are living in the shadow of uncertainty, suspecting that their local water supply might be contaminated, with the health risks this brings.

The High Court in London has ruled that two polluted communities in Nigeria's southern Niger Delta region cannot seek redress against oil giant Shell in the UK.

The court agreed with the multinational's argument that the case, affecting more than 40,000 people, should be heard by local courts in Nigeria.

Two communities in the Niger Delta - the Ogale and Bille - allege that decades of oil spills have polluted their fishing waters and contaminated their farmland.

But Mr Justice Peter Fraser stated that the case against Royal Dutch Shell, and its subsidiary Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, did not have the prospect of success and therefore could not proceed.

In 2015, Shell agreed to an $84m (£55m) settlement with residents of the Bodo community in the Niger Delta for two oil spills.

Image source, Getty Images

Tanzania says the country will receive a $305m (£242m) World Bank loan for the expansion of the port in the main commercial city Dar es Salaam, the Reuters news agency reports.

The port acts as a trade gateway for landlocked African states such as Zambia, Rwanda, Malawi, Burundi and Uganda, as well as the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The World Bank said in a 2014 report that inefficiencies at the Dar es Salaam port was costing Tanzania and its neighbours up to $2.6bn a year. 

BBC Monitoring
News from around the globe

Image source, AFP

Somalia's Islamist militnat group al-Shabab has executed three men it accused of spying for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other intelligence agencies, the pro-al-Shabab website Somali Memo reports.

The three were killed in front of a large crowd in south-western town of Yaq-Barawe.

Abdullahi Damey Mohamed Nur, 36, was "found guilty of spying for the CIA, and earned a salary of $200 [£158] a month", the website said.

An al-Shabab judge said Mohamed admitted helping the US target al-Shabab officials using drone strikes.

The judge also said Mohamed Iman Hassan, 42, was executed for spying for Kenya and earned a salary of $150.

Mohamed Sharif Ali, 21, was accused of helping Jubbaland regional administration to collect information on al-Shabab.

The al-Qaeda-linked group arrests people who do not agree with its ideology and accuses them of spying and are later killed.

In 2011, Muslim cleric Ahmed Ali Hussein was chained and shot dead after being accused of being a CIA spy and belonging to a sect opposed to the group.

The group is fighting to overthrow the UN-backed Somalia government and form its own version of an Islamic state.

Image source, AFP

The Gambia's new president has asked a West African military operation to remain in the country for six months, the AFP news agency quotes a top UN official as saying.

Adama Barrow is due to return home to assume power today from Senegal (see earlier entry).

West African leaders sent troops into The Gambia last week to pressure long-time leader Yahya Jammeh to leave office after losing elections in December.

Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the UN's most senior official in West Africa, made the comments at a news conference in Senegal, AFP reports:

Image source, Getty Images

Sudanese opposition leader Sadiq al-Mahdi is to return to the country today more than two years after he fled abroad, the AFP news agency quotes a senior official in his party as saying.

AFP says the 81-year-old former prime minister is expected to fly into the capital, Khartoum, and later make a speech to supporters.  

Mr Mahdi, whose civilian government was overthrown in the 1989 Islamist-backed coup that brought President Omar al-Bashir to power, has been in self-imposed exile, mainly in Cairo, AFP adds.

He left Sudan in August 2014, a few weeks after being released following a month in custody on treason-related charges that could have seen him face the death penalty. 

According to AFP, Mr Mahdi had been arrested after accusing pro-government paramilitary forces of rape in Sudan's western Darfur region.

The latest wasp species to be discovered has been named after Seth, the ancient Egyptian god of evil and chaos.

The name "crypt keeper" was chosen in reference to Seth's rather vicious antics, according to Professor Scott Egan from Rice University in the US:

The professor, who discovered the new wasp, also gave the BBC some gory details about how the insect consumes its victims:

Listen to Mr Egan's full interview on the BBC's Newsday programme below:

A Gambian man who drowned in front of onlookers in Venice’s Grand Canal is covered in today’s Times newspaper:

The paper says people in the Italian city filmed the incident, laughing and shouting racist comments at 22-year-old Pateh Sabally.

“Go on, go back home,” one of them shouted.

According to the Reuters news agency, Italian magistrates have opened an investigation after the video, filmed on a mobile phone on Sunday, was posted online.

No-one jumped into the icy waters to help Mr Sabally, who had reportedly arrived in Italy two years ago.

But at least three life rings were thrown into the water near him, which he did not appear to reach for, raising speculation that he wanted to take his own life.

"He is stupid. He wants to die," someone is heard saying in the video, Reuters reports.

Italian media reported that Mr Sabally had a permit to stay in Italy but had travelled to Switzerland seek work to be closer to relatives in Germany, but was reportedly sent back to Italy.  

More than 181,000 migrants arrived in Italy by boat in 2016, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa, an increase of almost 18% compared with 2015, Reuters says.

Tributes are being paid to Nigerian novelist Buchi Emecheta, who died at her home in London on Wednesday at the age of 72.

She was one of Nigeria's veteran writers, an author of more than 20 books including The Joys of Motherhood, Second-Class Citizen, The Bride Price and The Slave Girl, and had received many literary awards.

According to the British Council, external, much of her fiction was focused on sexual politics and racial prejudice, and was based on her own experiences as both a single parent and a black woman living in the UK.

She left her husband when he refused to read her first novel and burnt the manuscript, a World Service series on women writers reported.

Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor paid tribute to her on the BBC’s Newsday programme this morning:

Image source, AFP

A Kenyan court has given doctors and nurses a further five days to end a nationwide strike, reports the Kenyan newspaper The Star, external.  

Union officials had been threatened with jail had the strike not ended today.

The medics have been demanding the government honour a 2013 deal to increase salaries. 

They have rejected a government offer of a 40% rise saying that it fell short of the 2013 promises. 

About 5,000 medical staff in more than 2,000 public hospitals stopped working in the first week of December and patients have been unable to get basic care.

Hellen Wasilwa, a judge at Kenya's Employment and Labour Relations Court, said the five-day reprieve is "not for negotiation but for calling off the strike", reports AFP news agency. 

Image source, Justin Tallis

Egypt reached the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals last night as Group D winners with a 1-0 win over already qualified Ghana, who finish as runners-up.

The result means Egypt will face Morocco and Ghana will take on DR Congo in last-eight matches on Sunday.

Meanwhile Mali were knocked out of the tournament as they drew with Uganda in their final Group D game.

Image source, AFP

Adama Barrow, the new Gambian president, is expected to return home today to assume power at 16:00 GMT.

Mr Barrow was sworn in last week in Senegal as regional leaders were persuading his predecessor, Yahya Jammeh, to step aside.

Diplomats have urged Mr Barrow's swift return to avoid any power vacuum.

Reports say Mr Barrow will stay at his own residence while State House is assessed for potential risks following Mr Jammeh's departure into exile in Equatorial Guinea.

Several thousand West African troops remain in The Gambia amid reports that rogue pro-Jammeh elements are embedded in the country's security forces.

President Barrow will be accompanied by the United Nations envoy for West Africa, Mohamed ibn Chambas, who's said the UN will help uphold security in The Gambia.

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