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

A reminder of today's wise words:

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

And we leave you with this picture of a lemur taken by the BBC's Raissa Ioussouf in Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo:

Image source, Getty Images

We reported earlier that Kenya's electoral body is considering a request to extend the 17 October deadline set for a re-run of the nullified election.

Reuters news agency has since seen a letter from the French firm that supplied the electronic system used for the vote. It tells the electoral commission that the two electronic systems would have to be re-installed.

"This represents a very significant amount of work, which cannot be secured by October 17," the letter says.

Nomsa Maseko
BBC Africa, Johannesburg

Zimbabwe's main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is reportedly responding well to treatment.

He was airlifted from Zimbabwe's capital Harare to Johannesburg in South Africa after he fell ill during his political party’s strategic meeting last Thursday.

Mr Tsvangirai was prime minister in an uneasy coalition government with President Robert Mugabe between 2009 and 2013.

However, his health has been a worry to his supporters since last year.

The 65-year-old Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader announced he had been diagnosed with colon cancer last year and that he had begun chemotherapy.

It remains unclear when the MDC leader will be discharged from hospital but his party’s spokesperson said he would be returning to Zimbabwe soon to campaign ahead of the 2018 elections.

Image source, Getty Images

Jose Tembe
BBC Africa, Maputo

Mozambique's health authorities say a growing number of patients are being abandoned at hospital by relatives.

In the first half of this year 67 patients were abandoned by their families at hospitals in Mozambique's capital, Maputo,the city's chief doctor Sheila Lobo said.

She added that this included 17 abandoned infants.

Last year, caring for abandoned relatives cost the health service over $21,000 (£15,500), Ms Lobo said.

A fire has broken out at a market in Ivory Coast's capital, Abidjan.

No injuries have been reported but goods and market stalls have been damaged.

"I lost everything - there is nothing left in my food and domestic material shop", a shopkeeper told AFP.

It took firefighters several hours to control the fire. Police have opened an investigation into its cause.

Two people have filed a High Court petition calling for the autonomy of western Kenya, the Daily Star reports, external.

The two men, Mathew Okwanda Mwilitsa and Alex Misigo, are calling for a referendum on the political future of what was formerly the Eastern Province of Uganda.

Doing so would allow people to "exercise their right to determination in terms of their rights to nationality, territorial integrity, economic, social and culture as a people", the petition states.

The two men have sued the governments of Uganda, Kenya and the UK.

They are reported to have blamed the UK government for failing to resolve the issue when first granting independence.

Tamasin Ford
BBC Africa, Abidjan

Abidjan’s port, the biggest in West Africa and the third largest on the continent after Durban and Tangiers, is going through a billion dollar makeover.

It’s been 70 years since any money has been invested in Ivory Coast’s leading port. Work started two years ago and it’s expected to take another two before it's completed.

With the fear of losing its importance on the continent, the government has borrowed millions to get it back on track.

BBC Trending

Image source, MINA SAMIR

Mina Samir is a 25-year-old year old Egyptian police officer and fitness guru. But women aren't turning to him for fitness advice - they want him to tell them how to deal with harassment.

Mr Samir runs Facebook pages promoting a healthy lifestyle and women's fitness in particular.

When victims of online harassment started sending him messages asking for advice he thought it was his duty to respond.

"I used to reply to nine or 10 messages a day. Now I cannot cope - in one week, I could receive thousands of messages asking for help."

Mr Samir mainly advises on how to deal with online stalkers, but his first request was from a young woman whose boyfriend was blackmailing her using private photos.

Read more here.

Wanyama wa Chebusiri
BBC Africa

Image source, EPA

Uncertainty continues to loom over the repeat of the presidential elections in Kenya slated for 17 October.

The main opposition alliance, Nasa, vowed that its leader Raila Odinga will not participate in next month’s polls until key changes are made to the electoral commission IEBC.

Yesterday at a rally on the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi, Nasa leaders demanded reforms to the IEBC before they take part in the polls.

They want IEBC officials to be sacked, and a thorough audit of the electronic system used to transmit results.

Meanwhile, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s ruling Jubilee party says it is ready for the repeat polls, dismissing Nasa’s boycott threats as "cowardly".

Local media reports deputy president William Ruto saying the opposition sensed defeat.

Our sources say the IEBC has arranged an exclusive meeting with the two leading politicians within this week.

Image source, PA

An Egyptian court has acquitted Irish citizen Ibrahim Halawa and his three sisters of charges including murder in a mass trial that has been going on for over four years, reports Reuters.

Mr Halawa was part of a trial in which nearly 500 people were charged with breaking into a mosque and killing 44 people, Reuters adds.

The news agency says it was in the violence that followed the ousting of former Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in 2013.

At least 15 people have been killed in two suicide bomb attacks in northeastern Nigeria, reports AFP news agency.

A rescue worker quoted AFP said 43 other people were wounded in the explosions in the village of Mashalari in Borno state.

The region is one of the places worst hit by an insurgency led by the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram.

Read more about a suicide bomber who changed her mind:

'How I almost became a Boko Haram suicide bomber'

Image source, Getty

The United Nations says $10m ($7.4m) is needed to to keep cholera from spreading in Nigeria, reports AFP news agency.

The outbreak has now killed at least 44 people in north-east Nigeria, a UN statement said.

It added that there were close to 2,300 confirmed or suspected cases.

The first cholera case was identified in Borno State on 16 August and has since spread, mainly in camps for those displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency.

Inadequate sanitation and stagnant groundwater are a cause of water-borne diseases in displaced persons camps.

A new portable machine could detect viruses in cassava crops within 20 minutes, researchers have told the BBC.

Cassava crops are being decimated by the white fly - but a portable DNA sequencer, which identifies and tracks the disease, could be the solution they say.

"Previously, detecting viruses involved sending samples abroad, so it would take maybe three months to get results," says Dr Joseph Ndunguru of the Cassava Whitefly Project.

Around 800 million people worldwide rely on cassava root as their main source of carbohydrate, more than 200 million of whom are in Africa.

A 17-year-old boy from Canada who built his own phone after his Somalian mother said she couldn't afford to buy him a smartphone has been speaking to the BBC.

Mo Omer - who calls himself a "tech nerd" - built a smartphone from scratch, and says he will sell it at just $180 (£133).

"It's got everything you'd find in a normal phone, it just doesn't cost nearly as much," he told the BBC.

Phones "are not very complicated devices", he added - and says he'd had interest from parts of Africa.

"We've had offers from Nigeria and Algeria and a lot of other places. It's a rapidly growing market that we'd love to get into".

You can hear Mo on BBC Focus on Africa radio later today.

Image source, AFP

Congolese army commanders orchestrated a wave of massacres that killed hundreds of people between 2014-2016 in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Reuters news agency reports.

The news agency is quoting a report by the Congo Research Group, external (CRG) who interviewed 249 perpetrators, eyewitnesses and victims.

CRG cited multiple witnesses saying that army commanders supported and in some cases organised the killings. During some massacres, sources told CRG, soldiers secured the perimeter so that victims could not escape.

The report says the first massacres were orchestrated in 2013 by former leaders of the Popular Congolese Army who were trying to undermine confidence in the central government.

Congo government spokesman Lambert Mende said a number of high-ranking officers had been convicted for their roles in the massacres but criticised CRG for “trying to revive an old affair”, reports Reuters.

The general named in the report has repeatedly denied any personal responsibility.

BBC World Service

Image source, PA

South Africa's tax agency is to launch legal proceedings against the auditing firm KPMG.

The agency's head Tom Moyane accused KPMG of causing reputational damage by releasing confidential details of an alleged rogue unit within the revenue service.

He said KPMG had acted unethically and unlawfully and should be blacklisted.

On Friday, KPMG replaced its entire South African management team following an investigation into work done for the controversial Gupta business family who are linked to President Jacob Zuma.

KPMG said it had done nothing unlawful.

At least seven people have been arrested in Uganda's capital, Kampala, following demonstrations against a proposed bill to lift the age limit to run for president.

The current age limit is 75.

The changes to the constitution would allow President Yoweri Museveni to run for president again in 2021. The president's exact age is up for debate, but his Wikipedia page says he is 73.

Youth activist group The Alternative, who organised the demonstration, says their offices were broken into last night by soldiers and police.

They claim that laptops, computers and campaign materials were taken, reports the BBC's Catherine Byaruhanga in Kampala.

BBC Monitoring
The world through its media

Kenya's electoral body is today holding a plenary to consider a request to push the 17 October election, the Star reports, external.

The request comes from French firm Safran Morpho. Last week the firm asked the electoral agency to extend the date to 26 October to allow it to upgrade the system used for voter identification and the transmission of results.

The firm wants to upgrade the system and to clean out any data held ahead of the repeat presidential poll.

The UN has denied Malawi's flag was flown upside down at its headquarters in New York, US.

A picture appearing to show this has been shared on social media, and some were saying it was a symbol of the country's state:

But the UN told the BBC that the flag was flying correctly and that backdrop in the photo is not even the UN headquarters.

You can see the difference in this picture tweeted by Malawi's government:

Correction: This story has been changed to reflect the UN's denial

The BBC World Service has launched three websites for Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea as part of its biggest expansion since the 1940s.

• Afaan Oromoo
• Amharic
• Tigrinya

The sites will be a "source of truth" in a region with limited independent media, said BBC editor Will Ross.

The Amharic, Afaan Oromo and Tigrinya sites' launch will be followed in a few months by the launch of radio programmes in the three languages.

Read more on the BBC News website.