Image source, Standard

At a time when fact-based reporting is increasingly being undermined by fake news, the BBC's Dickens Olewe has been looking at the lessons for the media in Africa.  

In his analysis he picks out a few fake stories that have tried to fool people recently:

• Eritrean men ordered to marry two wives or risk jail
• UK Announces Visa Free Entry For Nigeria And Other Commonwealth African Countries
• Trump says "Africans are lazy fools only good at eating, lovemaking and thuggery"
• Robert Mugabe says Zimbabweans are "honest people" but "stealing is in every Kenyan's blood".

He explains that some writers are motivated to publish fake stories in order to get more people visiting their sites.

Find out more about what we can do about fake news in this month's BBC Africa Debate. It will air at 19:00 GMT on Friday 17 February at 19:00 GMT and Sunday 19 February at 12:00 GMT on the BBC World Service.  

A child has been killed as cyclone Dineo hit Mozambique, reports Radio Mozambique.

The reports say the child was killed by a falling tree in the southern town Massinga. 

The broadcaster says four people have been killed by the cyclone.

Dineo reached Inhambane, southern Mozambique, on Wednesday night, buffeting the town with winds in excess of 100 kmh (62mph), torrential rain and rough seas, according to the South African Weather Service (SAWS). 

The storm has begun to die down and Dineo has been downgraded to a tropical depression this morning, AFP news agency quotes SAWS as saying.   

SAWS does adds that it could still cause heavy rainfall and flooding as it heads inland toward South Africa. 

Mortar shells were fired near the presidential palace in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, soon after a ceremony to mark the transfer of power to the new president, reports the BBC's Ibrahim Aden from the city. 

Unconfirmed reports say they hit homes in the neighborhood, killing four people. 

We mentioned earlier that the old Somali president is handing over power to the new president.

The BBC's Ibrahim Aden has sent these pictures of the defeated Hassan Sheikh Mohamud showing election winner Mohamed Abdullahi "Farmajo" Mohamed around his new pad. 

One thing it revealed is how gifts from other countries have built up over the years:

State House has been given souvenirs from organisations ranging from the European Union to the Association of Arab Universities:

We're not sure who gave the ornate bird statue:

Image source, Getty Images

A rebel group in the Central African Republic killed at least 32 civilians and captured fighters after clashes in December 2016 with another rebel group, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says, external. 

The rights group is concerned that the killings took place despite the presence of Minusca, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR). 

According to HRW, the killings reportedly took place on 12 December in Bakala, a town in the southern-central part of the country. 

Rebels from the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic (UPC) killed 25 people after calling them to a school for an alleged meeting, HRW said. 

Earlier that day, they killed seven men who were returning from a nearby gold mine, it added. 

CAR has been struggling to recover from chaos after going through nearly three years of civil war which broke following a coup in 2013. 

A former BBC journalist in Somalia tweets the moment when the old president hands power - in the form of a lever-arch file -  to the new president:

This was not a one-person-one-vote election. Instead, Somalia's MPs elected the new president - Mohamed Abdullahi "Farmajo" Mohamed - in a vote held in a heavily guarded aircraft hangar in the capital Mogadishu because of fears of an attack by militant Islamists. 

Mr Mohamed defeated Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who was hoping that MPs will back him for a second term.   

Read more on the BBC News website.

Image source, AFP

The Democratic Republic of Congo will not be able to afford an agreed presidential election this year, the government says.

Budget Minister Pierre Kangudia said the cost of organising the poll, which was said to be $1.8bn (£1.5bn), was too expensive.

Last year the government and the opposition agreed that new elections would be held by the end of 2017.

Mr Kabila's opponents have accused him of repeatedly delaying the poll in order to remain in power.

Read more on the BBC News website.

Image source, AFP

French presidential front-runner Emmanuel Macron has come under fire from his right-wing opponents for calling France's colonisation of Algeria a "crime against humanity," AFP news agency reports. 

Mr Macron visited the Martyrs' Memorial in Algeria this week, and said in a television interview that France's actions during the colonial era were "genuinely barbaric, and constitute a part of our past that we have to confront by apologising". 

Les Republicans candidate Francois Fillon yesterday condemned what he called "this hatred of our history, this perpetual repentance that is unworthy of a candidate for the presidency of the republic", while Wallerand de Saint-Just, an official in Marine Le Pen's far-right National Front party, accused him of "shooting France in the back", AFP reports. 

And an ally of ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gerald Darmanin, tweeted "Shame on Emmanuel Macron for insulting France while abroad". 

Opinion polls predict that Mr Macron will win's April's election, but there will be a run-off in May with his main rival being Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon. 

Matthew Davies
Editor, BBC Africa Business Report

South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC) says harsh penalties should be imposed on banks operating in the country, should they be found guilty of manipulating the foreign exchange markets. 

The statement came after South Africa's competition watchdog referred its investigation into the foreign exchange dealings of 17 banks to the prosecuting authorities (see previous post). 

The ANC says the latest developments expose the "ethical crisis in the South African banking sector". 

Image source, AFP

Image source, Getty Images

The opposition Economic Freedom Fighters is calling for the banks to have their operating licences immediately revoked. 

However, another opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, says the timing of the case is suspicious, given that in his State of the Nation address last week, President Jacob Zuma said the competition authorities would be one of the tools used to drive radical economic transformation forward. 

Separately, Mr Zuma also accused the country's four big banks of controlling South Africa's economy. If found guilty, the Competition Commission will push for a fine of 10% of the bank's turnovers.

Andrew Harding
BBC News, Johannesburg

Seventeen banks have been accused of rigging the price of South Africa’s currency, the rand. The country’s Competition Commission has called for big fines against the banking giants, which include HSBC and Barclays, after making a long list of serious and extensive allegations against them. 

The commission accused the banks’ foreign currency traders of conspiring to fix the price of the rand; sometimes using online chat rooms to coordinate fictitious bids and offers in order to sway the market.

A two year investigation concluded there was “widespread collusion” and recommended that the banks be fined 10% of their annual turnovers in South Africa.

The 17 banks are now likely to face prosecution at South Africa’s Competition Tribunal.

The Bank of America, Barclays, JP Morgan and HSBC are among those implicated in activities that the commission alleges have been going on since at least 2007. 

Several banks have already said they will cooperate with the authorities.

In recent years, South Africa has successfully prosecuted and fined local construction companies and bakeries for price fixing.

Read: How to rig the market

Nigeria's President Muhammad Buhari met three top politicians in London last night, in what appears to be his latest attempt to dampen speculation that he is being treated for a serious illness in the British capital. 

One of his visitors, Senate President Bukola Saraki, described Mr Buhari as "healthy, witty & himself".  

Last night, the president tweeted:   

In his tweet, the Senate president said:

Mr Buhari, 74, has been in the UK since last month for unspecified medical checks.  

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