Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has called for the establishment of a national database for biometric details to enable the arrest of criminals.

Mr Museveni tweeted the suggestion in a series of posts reacting to the killing of a 28-year-old woman, Susan Mugara, which has captured the nation.

Ms Magara was kidnapped on 7 February, with the hostage takers demanding a ransom of Uganda shillings 60m ( $16,200; £11,700).

Her body was found yesterday in the capital, Kampala.

Mr Museveni explained how the DNA system would work:

He called Ms Magara's murderers "pigs":

South Africa's "lion whisperer" has admitted he was walking the big cat which mauled a 22-year-old to death.

Conservationist Kevin Richardson has said he is "devastated" by the incident.

In an Instagram post, Mr Richardson revealed he and an "experienced" colleague had taken three lions out for their normal weekly walk on Tuesday morning when things went wrong.

"We assessed the landscape for other big five animals and as per procedure sent out a notification that we were walking in the reserve," he wrote.

"One of the lionesses charged off after an Impala and must have run 2 to 2.5km where she encountered the 22-year-old outside the car.”

With the lioness out of sight, the first Mr Richardson knew of the attack was a call from the manager of a tented camp.

According to a statement from Dinokeng Game Reserve, released to South African news site TimesLive, external, Mr Richardson immediately called the emergency services, before securing the other two lions and "running" to the scene.

Bystanders had tried to revive the girl, who has not been named, but were unable to save her.

The reserve told TimesLive they were "deeply saddened and shocked" by events.

Mr Richardson is known internationally for his work with lions and regularly shares pictures of himself with the big cats on Instagram.

Read the BBC's earlier story here.

The Senegalese singer was a global ambassador for Oxfam until questions were raised about how it handled a sex scandal in Haiti.

Here, he tells the BBC why he felt he had to step down from his role for the charity - and what he wants them to do so he can feel comfortable returning.

Image source, AFP

Hundreds of people are feared to have drowned after a convoy of boats sank in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday night.

Officially, there were 122 passengers on board, of whom 108 have been rescued, leaving 14 unaccounted for.

But local politician Didace Pembe has warned that hundreds more could still be missing and eyewitnesses have told the BBC there were far more than 122 people on board the boats.

Mr Pembe has also called on the authorities to provide medical care for the survivors.

Travelling on the waterways is common in the province of Mai Ndombe, due to the poor state of the roads.

However, local boats seldom have passenger lists showing the correct number of people on board.

And safety measures - aiming to prevent overloading and limit night sailings - are not always enforced.

Chris Ewokor
BBC Africa, Abuja

Image source, afp

Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari has warned the world will pay dearly if the Lake Chad was allowed to dry up.

Mr Buhari is leading discussions in the capital Abuja on how to save the Lake Chad from extinction.

Lake Chad is literally drying up in front of peoples' eyes: it has shrunk by 90% in the past four decades, thanks, in part, to a combination of climate change and mismanagement.

The lake is the main source of freshwater for 40 million people, mainly in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

But as it dries up and hunger rises, the region has become fragile - migration and resettlement has intensified as farmers and fishermen have been confronted with leaner harvest, while pastoralists move out in search of water and food for their cattle.

Boko Haram jihadists have also targeted subsistence farmers and fishermen to fill their ranks.

Mr Buhari has been joined at the Unesco-backed conference by other regional leaders and representatives from more than 30 countries.

At the end of the conference today, the regional leaders will decide if the options available to them to save the lake and make the basin habitable again, are practical and realistic and determine if there is political will to go ahead.

Image source, Getty Images

Distraught families have accused the Malian military of killing seven civilians during an operation in the central Sokolo town last week.

Nouhoun Sarr, the nephew of one of seven men killed on 21 February, said the authorities informed him on Wednesday morning of his uncle's fate.

"They called us to tell us our relatives were killed during the operation, without elaborating," he told AFP news agency.

Yehia Ag Mohamed Ali, an opposition politicians, told the agency the soldiers killed the civilians in Sokolo.

The government has opened an inquiry into the killings, but said in a statement on Wednesday the army was "carrying out reconnaissance missions and searches in the Sokolo area, during which civilians unfortunately lost their lives".

A UN report published this month found "at least 20%" of recorded incidents which endangered civilian lives during 2016 and the first six months of 2017 involved the Malian authorities - essentially the security forces, AFP said.

Read: Mali country profile

The UN's children's agency Unicef has condemned the killing of one of its workers in the Central African Republic.

The organisation said five education workers were also killed in an attack on 25 February while travelling in the northwestern region near the Chadian border.

“We strongly condemn this senseless act against aid workers who were there to improve the lives of the most vulnerable populations," it said in a statement.

"We offer our deepest condolences to the families and the colleagues of the victims," it added.

Read: Central African Republic country profile

Journalists at Tanzania's Mwananchi magazine have today marked 100 days since the disappearance of their colleague Azory Gwanda.

Francis Nanai, the CEO of Mwananchi Communications, told reporters that they do not have any leads to the whereabouts of Mr Gwanda.

The journalist, who lives in a small town called Kibiti, 130 km (80 miles) south of Dar es Salaam, was the first reporter to write in detail about a series of executions in the area.

He was last seen on 21 November.

His wife, Anna Pinoni, said four people in a white Toyota Land Cruiser vehicle picked him in the city centre.

She said that their home was also broken into.

Image source, AFP

We reported yesterday about a disturbing trend in Ghana of pregnant women using pills to lighten the skins of their unborn babies.

Medical experts say these illegal drugs can cause birth defects, including damage to limbs and internal organs.

Ghana's Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) says using Glutathione pills for this purpose is dangerous, adding it wants "the general public to know that no product has been approved by the FDA in the form of a tablet to lighten the skin of the unborn child”.

Emmanuel Nkruma from the FDA told the BBC's Newsday programme that they became aware of the practice through the agency's surveillance.

He said that the cases are mostly isolated and that most distributors of the pill get it from people who smuggle it into the country.

Ghana hit the headlines last month when candidates for jobs in the immigration service were disqualified from the recruitment process if they bleached skin or stretch marks, for fear they might bleed during the "strenuous" training.

At least 10 people have been killed and 15 wounded when two trains collided in Egypt's Behaira province on Wednesday, the health ministry said.

The collision between a freight train and a passenger train took place in the northern province, it said in a statement.

The cause of the accident was not immediately clear, news agency AFP said.

Image source, AFP

Liberia has given a leading foreign investment firm 72 hours to pay a $25,000 fine for hiking the price of chicken eggs.

According Liberia's Daily Observer newspaper,, external Fouani Brothers Corporation raised the prices of eggs from $35.89 per carton of 360 eggs to $70 per carton.

The BBC correspondent in Liberia says the fine, announced by Minister Wilson Tarpeh, has received a mixed reaction, with some people hailing it, while others call it too harsh and heavy.

Our correspondent says the business entity in trouble is one of the unlucky ones, as arbitrary price increases of basic commodities is a common practice, as Liberia does not have a system to regulate the market.

Image source, Alabama State University

The Nigerian government is taking a US university to court, accusing it of mishandling scholarship students' access to funds meant for rent, books and food.

The government has joined dozens of Nigerian students in a lawsuit against Alabama State University which dates back to 2016.

It also accuses the university, which has been traditionally for black students, of charging them for accommodation they did not use and classes they did not take.

The university has denied it has done anything wrong, telling local media it had "adhered to and complied with every instruction and direction given to the University by the Nigerian government regarding that agreement".

It admitted the Nigerian government was owed $202,000 after everything was paid, but said it had been deposited into an account.

But Anthony Ifediba, who is representing the students, says they believe the university may have withheld as much as $800,000.

He told the Montgomery Advertiser, external the Nigerian government had paid Alabama State about $5m, which was meant to cover tuition and living costs for all the students.

He added:

Zimbabwe's mining minister has said the country has the capacity to boost its lithium supply, CNBC Africa reports., external

Winston Chitando told a mining investment conference in the capital, Harare, the country could supply "20% of the global demand when all known lithium resources are exploited".

The southern African nation is a top 10 producer of lithium, an alkali metal used in batteries for electric vehicles.

The rise in price of the metal, which has more than doubled in the past two years thanks to the demand from the electric vehicle industry, has triggered an expansion of mining of lithium.

Zimbabwe aims to restart its mining sector following years of lull under former President Robert Mugabe.

The new government is keen to attract fresh capital to its mining sector and is pushing lithium as a major draw, CNBC Africa reports.

An independent body which monitors activities of the Kenyan police has sent a team to investigate yesterday's shooting of a university student.

Independence Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) said it has dispatched a rapid response unit to investigate the killing of Evans Njoroge, the secretary-general of Meru University students' union.

The student leader was fatally shot while taking part in a demonstration against high tuition fees and bad conditions at the institution.

Local media quoted witnesses saying that the student leader was chased and gunned down by policemen.

The police are yet to officially comment on the incident.

A clip of the student leader addressing other students is being shared on Twitter:

• Read our earlier post on the shooting here.

Wanjiku Mungai
BBC Monitoring, Nairobi

An Angolan priest has claimed human traffickers are kidnapping people and selling their organs.

Speaking to Angolan news agency Angop, external, the Catholic priest, Zeferino Passagem, said criminals in the east of the country were kidnapping people before taking them to border towns.

The priest said the traffickers, who preyed on the poor, then took out “vital and sexual organs”.

He put the problem down to the country's long borders with Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A public official who also spoke to the agency said two women disappeared in the mission of Sao Bento in the province last December.

While the women’s relatives say that the police have yet to give any information on the case, the police countered that they were unable to find accurate information on the matter.

The public official added that some women farmers in the province have stopped going to their farms for fear of their safety.

According to a UN report, Angola lacks a specific law to tackle human trafficking, which makes it difficult to prosecute cases in the southern African country.

Image source, Mountzion General Assembly

South Africa's "Doom Pastor" - who sprayed congregants in the face with insecticide - is to pay a fine in order to avoid jail.

Lethebo Rabalago was offered the option of a four-year jail term or paying a 21,000 rand ($1,800; £1,300) after being found guilty of assault and contravening the Agricultural Stock Remedies Act.

The 25-year-old has agreed to pay the fine off in 3,000 rand monthly installments, the Sowetan newspaper reports, external.

Rabalago - who runs the Mount Zion General Assembly - was arrested after it emerged he had used the product to "cure" his followers of various ailments, including cancer and HIV, in 2016.

In photos circulating on social media - which were picked up around the world - he was seen spraying the insecticide directly into the eyes and various body parts of his congregants.

Five worshippers came forward to tell police he had sprayed it directly in their faces.

One was left coughing for months afterwards.

When he was convicted earlier this month the magistrate said that being "sprayed in their faces with Doom makes this offence [the] worst of its kind".

Authorities in Rwanda have closed more than 700 churches in the capital Kigali for failure to meet safety and hygiene standards, the privately-owned The New Times reports.

It says the operation began a week ago and has so far targeted 714 churches and one mosque.

A state official, Justus Kangwagye, told the news site the houses of worship were in breach of safety standards.

“Worshiping should be done in an organised way and meet minimum standards. Exercising your freedom of worship should not encroach on other people’s rights. They have been asked to halt operations until they meet the requirements,” he said.

He said some churches had not renewed their licences and the authorities were not going to allow them to continue to operate.

The report says some churches were operating in tents and did not have adequate parking for the worshippers, who ended up parking on the side of the road and causing traffic jams.

Kigali residents, according to the report, gave mixed reactions to the operation. Some supported the move but others called on the authorities to give the churches more time to comply with the rules.

Bishop Innocent Nzeyimana, the president of the Churches' Forum in Nyarugenge district, pleaded on behalf of the churches that they should be allowed to operate until the raised issues are fixed, the report said.

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