Seats reserved for opposition representatives at Cameroon's constitutional council were left empty as the results of the 7 October presidential election were read out, the BBC's Randy Joe Sa'ah reports.

Long-time President Paul Biya won a seventh term with more than 71% of the vote.

Opposition petitions to get the election re-run after complaints of rigging were dismissed last week.

Just outside the constitutional court compound, ruling RDPC/CPRDM party supporters began celebrating as soon as the result was announced, our correspondent says.

There were traditional dancers and motorbikes hooting and rough riding, he adds.

But there were no celebrations in the two English-speaking regions, where there is a separatist rebellion.

Official turnout for the vote was very low - just 5% in the North-West region and 16% in the South-West region.

A Ugandan born singer has won a major TV talent contest in Denmark.

Joanita Zachariassenn - who's lived in Denmark more than 25 years - won the competition with her performance of Kiss Kiss.

She spoke to BBC Newsday's Alan Kasujja.

Image source, AFP

Cameroon's constitutional council has now officially declared President Paul Biya winner of the election earlier this month with just over 71% of the vote.

Mr Biya has been in power since 1982.

Opposition parties complained that the process was not free and fair.

Mr Biya's nearest rival - Maurice Kamto of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement - won just over 14% of the vote.

Joshua Osih of the country's long-time main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front, got just 3% of the vote.

The results are not a surprise but that will not stop this from being another controversial election in Cameroon, the BBC's Africa editor Will Ross says.

Cameroon's President Paul Biya has been declared the winner of the 7 October election, the state broadcaster has tweeted:

Mr Biya beat eight other candidates to win his seventh term in office, CRTV says:

Last week, the constitutional council dismissed opposition petitions to have the election either partially or fully re-run.

They had complained of fraud and rigging.

The vote was disrupted in the twp predominantly English-speaking regions where there is a separatist rebellion.

Milton Nkosi
BBC Africa, Johannesburg

Image source, Foto24/Getty Images

South African judge Mandela Makaula has dismissed an application by the Nigerian pastor, Timothy Omotoso, who is accused of rape to recuse himself from the case.

Mr Omotoso's lawyer argued that the judge had shown some bias towards one of the witnesses, Cheryl Zondi.

South Africa is gripped by the rape trial of televangelist Pastor Omotoso taking place in the Port Elizabeth High Court and being broadcast live on television.

Mr Omotoso and his two co-accused are facing 63 charges which include rape, sexual assault and racketeering.

They have pleaded not guilty.

Through their lawyer, Peter Daubermann, they said that they would not receive a fair trial given the reaction by the public.

Mr Daubermann said that his clients felt unsafe coming to the court and that he himself had been intimidated by crowds, who are singing and chanting outside the court, who had thrown water at him.

Ms Zondi’s testimony under cross-examination went viral on social media last week as she recounted the graphic allegations that Mr Omotoso had raped and assaulted her while she was a member of his church from the age of 14.

Part of the bias Mr Daubermann complained about was that when the 22-year-old witness completed her testimony, the judge wished her “good luck” in her university exams.

Image source, eNCA

"Unfortunately I have to criticise you on those comments. You have aligned yourself with [Ms] Zondi," lamented the defence lawyer.

Judge Makaula was emphatic in his ruling.

"Suffice to say the application has no merit, the application has been denied.”

Cabinet ministers were in court on Monday morning in support of the witnesses testifying against Mr Omotoso.

A second witness was supposed to take the stand this morning when the accused brought the application for the judge to recuse himself.

The trial has been adjourned till Thursday.

Image source, EPA

Cameroon's President Paul Biya is poised to win a seventh term by a landslide following the election earlier this month.

Officially declared results in most of Cameroon's regions gave him between 70% and 90% of the votes.

The constitutional council still has to declare the final collation of all the results.

The 85-year-old has been in power since 1982 and is Africa's second longest serving leader.

The vote was disrupted in much of the English-speaking area of Cameroon which has seen a secessionist rebellion.

BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

Two of the six critically endangered black rhinos that were relocated in May from South Africa to Zakouma National Park in Chad have died.

Wildlife charity African Parks said the male and female rhinos were not poached and whilst the exact cause was not yet known, they may have died as a result of a virus.

A vet is carrying out a postmortem to find out the exact cause of death, the charity added.

African Parks confirmed that the four other rhinos are still alive and that they are being "closely monitored".

Before the relocation, black rhinos had not been seen in Chad since the early 1970s, largely as a result of rampant poaching.

Officials say the elephant population in Zakouma is on the rise after more than 90% of the animals were poached between 2002 and 2010.

Ishaq Khalid
BBC Africa, Abuja

A former state governor in Nigeria has been taken to court in Lagos on corruption charges.

Ayo Fayose, who was the governor of Ekiti state, is accused of receiving illegal payments from companies and individuals as well as acquiring property totalling more than $13m (£10m).

Nigeria's anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), says Mr Fayose used part of the money to fund his 2014 election campaign but some of the alleged illegal transactions took place while he was governor.

Mr Fayose pleaded not guilty to the corruption charges.

He has been remanded in custody until Wednesday when his bail application is expected to be heard.

The ex-governor is a staunch critic of President Muhammadu Buhari.

In recent months two former state governors, Joshua Dariye of Plateau state and Jolly Nyame of Taraba state, were sentenced to 14 years in prison each following separate corruption cases.

Local news agencies have been tweeting pictures of Mr Fayose at court:

The towering vista of Mount Kenya provides an unlikely backdrop to a tech-savvy Kenyan restaurant that has embraced crypto-currencies as a form of payment.

Betty's Place specialises in "nyama choma", a lip-smacking goat meat barbeque that is a firm favourite amongst Kenyans.

Located in the rural town of Nyeri, about 150km (90 miles) outside the capital, Nairobi, it is one of the few businesses in the country that allows customers to pay with not one but two crypto-currencies - Bitcoin and Dash.

"Since the world is becoming more global, my place is also becoming a global restaurant," says Beatrice Wambugu, the owner of the restaurant.

Ms Wambugu started trading in Bitcoin two years ago and and within a year she made enough money to buy the two-storey Nyeri hotel, which she converted to Betty's Place.

Betty's Place is not only a place for tasty Kenyan cuisine, but it has become something of a local attraction for people wanting to know more about Bitcoin

Read more about Betty's Place

Cameroon's state broadcaster has shared more results of the 7 October presidential elections.

President Paul Biya has an unassailable lead in the Far North region but the 85-year-old leader has been beaten by opposition candidate Maurice Kamto in the Littoral region, where the economic capital Douala is.

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was the recipient of the prestigious Pen Pinter Prize this year.

She is known as a strong voice on politics, race and feminism.

She spoke to BBC Focus on Africa about her family, Africa, misogyny and the upcoming adaptation of her novel Americanah with actress Lupita Nyong'o.

Americanah follows the experiences of a young Nigerian woman who moves to the United States to study at university.

Cameroon's constitutional council has begun announcing the presidential election results region-by-region.

There are 10 regions and three have been announced so far.

The national broadcaster is tweeting the results which show a commanding lead for incumbent Paul Biya who is hoping to win a seventh term:

Favour Nunoo
BBC Pidgin

Image source, Kwesi Debrah

Students at Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Knust) have mounted road blocks, vandalised property and boycotted lectures in protest over what they describe as unwarranted brutality by campus security and university management.

The trouble started at Knust, which is in the country's second city Kumasi, last Friday night after 11 students were arrested by police after taking part in their usual end-of-week party, known as jamborees, which the university authorities recently banned.

One student was injured while being arrested.

The university vice-chancellor had complained that the jamborees were often associated with misbehaviour and profanity on campus.

Image source, Kwesi Debrah

Knust's Student Representative Council called a boycott on lectures for Monday and called for a peaceful protest. But things turned violent as students began to express their frustration with the way that they had been treated.

Some have called for the vice-chancellor to step down and vowed to make the campus ungovernable.

They are also angry with changes that he has made to student accommodation, including turning previously men-only halls of residence to mixed-sex ones.

The hashtag #SayNoToBrutalityInKNUST has been trending on Twitter in Ghana as people share images and videos of what has been happening:

Liberia's Alfred Sirleaf (no relation of the former president) has become famous for his news blackboard in the centre of the capital, Monrovia, which displays the news and issues of the day.

But he has had to close his operations after a vehicle crashed into the Daily Talk newsstand last week.

But Mr Sirleaf questions whether this was an accident.

He told the BBC's Jonathan Paye-Layleh that he thought the vehicle deliberately drove into Daily Talk and said eyewitnesses saw a black jeep with tinted windows and no number plates speed away.

Mr Sirleaf told our reporter that his reporting on corruption scandals, especially the recent case of the freshly printed money going missing, has made him a lot of enemies.

He said that whenever he is walking alone he has "serious security concerns".

Mr Sirleaf has now launched a public appeal for assistance in rebuilding the damaged newsstand.

Niger's government has announced that it will pay a total of $3.5m (£2.6m) in compensation to people in Tibiri, south-central Niger, who were left physically deformed more than 20 years ago after drinking water with a high fluoride content.

Three years ago, a court ruled that the victims should be compensated.

In 2001, the health centre in Tibiri had counted nearly 5,000 children suffering from various problems caused by excessive fluoride in the water between 1985 and 2000 by the state-owned Nigerian Water Corporation.

It was discovered that the fluoride content was more than four times the World Health Organization level.

"We are going to pay. There is no reason for the government not to comply with a judicial ruling," Finance Minister Hassoumi Massoudou told parliament, the AFP news agency reports

Image source, EPA

The results from Cameroon's presidential election, held earlier this month, are due to be announced soon by the constitutional council.

This comes after it rejected opposition calls for a partial or total rerun of the poll.

There have been complaints of fraud and rigging.

President Paul Biya is hoping to win a seventh term in office and extending his 36 years in power.

At the weekend the AFP news agency reported that it had seen a signed statement from Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema congratulating Mr Biya on winning the election.

Cameroon's president is Africa's second longest serving leader after President Nguema, who came to power in 1979.

Chris Ewokor
BBC Africa, Abuja

A 24-hour curfew has been imposed in northern Nigeria's Kaduna city.

The curfew follows widespread sectarian violence that killed dozens of people in Kaduna state last week.

The police say a special intervention force has been deployed to the areas where violence broke out.

A total of fifty-five people have been killed in clashes which reportedly began as a dispute between Christian and Muslim youths in a market in Kasuwan Magani town.

On Sunday President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the violence.

Tomi Oladipo
BBC Africa security correspondent

Police in Tanzania have arrested 104 militants it accuses of planning to set up bases in neighbouring Mozambique.

There have been at least 50 suspected Islamist attacks in the north of Mozambique since October 2017.

Ninety people have been killed in the violence and more than 1,000 families displaced.

Tanzania police say they made the arrests during recent security operations in the south and east of the country.

They say the suspects admitted they were going to Mozambique to join radical camps.

The part of Mozambique that borders Tanzania, Cabo Delagado, has been plagued with violence for the past year.

The group behind the attacks has not made any explicit statement on intentions or claimed any attack.

Residents of the affected area suggest the attackers include people from east and central Africa and have often forced local communities to observe Sharia law.

Mozambique’s government says it will be firm in dealing with those behind the attacks, in an area near some of the world’s largest untapped natural gas reserves.

Read more:

• How ruby smugglers nurtured jihadists
• Mozambique country profile

Missing Nigerian separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu says he is in Israel a year after soldiers stormed his home in the southern Abia state.

Mr Kanu, who is a leader of a movement calling for a separate state of Biafra, made the announcement on Radio Biafra, an outlawed pirate radio station.

A video of the Indigenous People Of Biafra leader draped in a prayer shawl at the Western Wall in Jerusalem has also been shared online.

Some reports had said that Nigerian authorities had detained him after the 2017 raid.

His wife, Uchechi Kanu, told the BBC in February that she believed the government knew where he was being held after his home was raided by soldiers.

In 2015, Mr Kanu was charged with "criminal conspiracy, intimidation and membership of an illegal organisation" - charges that could amount to treason.

He was released on bail last year after spending more than 18 months in a Nigerian jail without trial.

Image source, AFP

BBC World Service

Image source, Getty Images

Ethiopia and the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) have signed a peace deal, ending the ONLF’s 34-year armed rebellion.

The deal stipulates that both sides will cease hostilities, with the ONLF agreeing to use peaceful political means to pursue independence for Ethiopia's Somali-speaking region - known as Ogaden.

The ONLF declared a ceasefire in August, after Ethiopia’s parliament removed it from a list of outlawed terrorist groups as part of a reform policy driven by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

More than 1,000 people were killed during the long-running conflict. The accord was signed in the Eritrean capital, Asmara.