BBC World Service

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has implemented a series of reforms, has called on Ethiopians living abroad to help build the nation and bring new ideas to the country.

He was addressing Ethiopian expatriates at a stadium in the German city of Frankfurt on the final stage of his European tour.

Earlier this week, he met the French and German leaders in Paris and Berlin.

He also made a pitch for investment in Ethiopia at a G20 Africa gathering.

Since he became prime minister in April, he has also visited the US seeking investors.

Image source, EPA

Police in Zimbabwe have raided the offices of a religious leader who said he had developed a cure for HIV, Aids and cancer, the state-owned Herald newspaper reports, external.

Walter Magaya, who heads the Prophetic Healing and Deliverance Ministries, said on Sunday that a herb, called aguma, could destroy the HIV virus.

His announcement caused a backlash, the Herald says.

“As you continue to take the aguma, you start to see your CD4 count disappearing until you become HIV negative,” the New ZImbabwe website quotes him as telling a congregation, external.

Information Minister Energy Mutodi confirmed the raid on Twitter saying samples of aguma were seized adding that "there is no cure yet" for HIV.

Louise Dewast
Kinshasa, DR Congo

The European Union is set to renew sanctions on senior officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, the presidential candidate backed by current President Joseph Kabila.

Sources in the capital, Kinshasa, have told BBC News that sanctions on Mr Shadary and 15 other Congolese nationals are set to be renewed on 12 December, just a few days before long-awaited elections in the country.

Mr Shadary is a former interior minister who oversaw security forces during a crackdown from 2016 to 2017 in Kinshasa, where a number of demonstrators were killed.

Sanctions were initially imposed on him for his alleged role in the crackdown.

After some hesitance from Mediterranean countries to renew EU sanctions, sources now say that all 28 member states are unanimous on the decision to renew sanctions that include travel bans and asset freezes.

Image source, Reuters

Mayeni Jones
BBC News, Lagos

The body of a retired Nigerian army general, who mysteriously disappeared on 3 September, has been found in a well.

Gen Idris Alkali went missing while travelling alone from the capital, Abuja, to his hometown in Bauchi state.

His car was found a month ago in an abandoned mining pit on the outskirts of the central city of Jos.

Last week the army discovered a shallow grave where the body of the general had been buried before being moved.

A military spokesperson said that on Wednesday, one of the people who moved the body led them to an abandoned well south of Jos, where they were able to recover the general’s remains.

Gen Alkali was the Nigerian army’s former chief of administration.

He had just retired after 35 years of service when he disappeared.

In previous statements, the army said it believed the general was killed by local youth, protesting a recent attack by gunmen in their community.

Image source, ullstein bild

Prominent Ethiopian human rights lawyer Meaza Ashenafi has been elected as the first woman to head the country's federal supreme court.

Her name was put forward by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and MPs unanimously approved the appointment.

It's the latest in a series of appointments in Ethiopia that has seen the promotion of women to top jobs.

Last week, Sahle-Work Zewde became the country's first president - a ceremonial position.

The week before, Prime Minister Abiy appointed a cabinet with half the posts taken up by women.

Ms Meaza founded the Ethiopian Women's Lawyers Association in 1995. Before that she was a judge at the high court and helped advise the team drawing up the new constitution in the early 1990s.

She has also worked at the UN Economic Commission for Africa and helped develop the country's first bank for women, state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC) reports.

FBC has tweeted a picture of Ms Meaza being sworn in:

Ms Meaza was also portrayed in the 2014 Angelina Jolie executive produced movie Difret, external, about a lawyer who was fighting for the rights of a rural girl who was abducted for marriage.

Our proverb of the day:

Image source, iStock

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

Welcome to BBC Africa Live where we'll be keeping you up to date with news and developments on the continent.

BBC Africa Live
Dickens Olewe

That's all from BBC Africa Live for now. You can keep up-to-date with what's happening across the continent by listening to the Africa Today podcast or checking the BBC News website.

A reminder of Wednesday's proverb:

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

And we leave you with photo of a man in a tea shop along the road from Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, to the second largest city of Nouadhibou.

Ashley Lime
BBC News, Nairobi

A picture of an armed policeman in an examination room has elicited a lot of discussion in Kenya with many criticising education authorities for allowing it.

Primary schoolchildren have been sitting for their final exam and education officials have been implementing several measures to curb cheating, which has become a big problem in Kenya. It's unclear if deploying armed policemen in exams rooms is part of the strategy.

Esther Njeri, a 35-year-old woman whose child is sitting this year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam, said police officers should monitor classrooms from outside to avoid intimidating pupils.

“Even as an adult there’s an unexplainable tension when you find yourself seated next to armed police officers or even being in the same room with them,” she said.

A head teacher of a school in the capital, Nairobi, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the presence of armed security personnel in schools was not an issue.

“The security of the exam is paramount and having [armed guards] is not a new situation since the officers are not going inside the classrooms... This has been replicated in other schools to ensure there is no cheating during these exams,” the teacher said.

At Olympic Primary School in Nairobi armed guards refused to allow anyone was not accredited to enter the institution’s compound.

At other primary schools in the capital, guards said they were under instruction not to allow anyone into the institutions.

President Uhuru Kenyatta made an impromptu visit in one school in the capital.

His office later shared pictures of the visit:

Aliyu Tanko
BBC Hausa

A team of Nigerian doctors successfully separated a pair of conjoined twins at a hospital in the capital, Abuja.

The doctors led by Dr Nuhu Kwajafa of the Global Peace Initiative confirmed the success of the operation that took them several hours, at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital Gwagwalada.

The two boys were born in June but could not be separated until they were four months old.

Image source, Speaker's media office

Image source, Speaker's media office

Jonathan Paye-Layleh
BBC Africa, Monrovia

Inmates at Liberia's largest rural prison have gone on hunger strike over a number of concerns, including lack of meals and poor sanitation, state radio reported Wednesday.

The inmates at the prison in the east of the country are quoted as complaining that their meals have been reduced from three times to once a day, with each person now getting just one spoon of rice.

Inmates who fall sick are made to pay for fuel to be transported to hospital, the report said.

They are also required to pay for their medication.

The inmates wants the prison’s director replaced and have resolved to remain on hunger strike until the situation is corrected.

State radio could not get regional prison authorities to comment and efforts by the BBC to speak to the ministry of justice on the matter also proved unsuccessful.

Liberian prisons are crowded with pre-trial detainees who do not get a speedy trial because of a lack of adequate funding for the justice system.

In the next 45 minutes Patricia De Lille will officially cease to be the mayor of South Africa's coastal city of Cape Town, ending her seven years in office.

She resigned earlier today after a bitter dispute with her party, the Democratic Alliance.

She told BBC's Focus on Africa's Veronique Edwards that the past 18 months "have just been hell".

Listen to the interview:

Stanley Kwenda
BBC Africa

Image source, AFP

Benin striker Steve Mounie supports his country’s plan to change the national football team's nickname from The Squirrels to something that "reflects its ambitions".

The Huddersfield FC player suggests the name be changed to Python:

Apart from the symbolism Mounie said the snake's association would show the country is developing "some bite" on the pitch.

The Benin Football Federation (FBF) is in the process of changing the nickname of the national team to something evocative and respectable.

The Squirrels nickname was coined in the 1960s - apparently to reflect a small nation aiming to climb high.

But the country's football governing body feels that it is time for a change in order to match the team's ambitions.

It is not the first time Benin is looking to change the team's nickname. A similar move was made in 2008, but proved abortive.

Benin have never qualified for the Fifa World Cup and have only played in three African Cup of Nations finals: 2004, 2008 and 2010.

Milton Nkosi
BBC Africa, Johannesburg

The mayor of South Africa's coastal city of Cape Town, Patricia De Lille, has said she will step down amidst a drawn out, acrimonious relationship with her political party, the Democratic Alliance (DA).

She signed her resignation letter on the steps of the Cape Town High Court after filing papers challenging a report which resulted in the DA laying criminal charges against her.

She is alleged to have knowingly covered up fraud involving the city's transport authority.

Ms De Lille denied any wrongdoing saying: "One report cleared me of wrongdoing and the other one found me guilty."

The veteran politician also said that she was resigning from the DA, the main opposition party in South Africa.

“I can no longer stay in this abusive relationship,” she said.

"I have been fighting from a very young age in my life... my fight has never been about personal gain," she added.

Ms De Lille, who has been mayor for the last seven years, told reporters that two more councilors would be resigning in solidarity with her.

Five DA councillors resigned in solidarity with her last week after she delivered her final address to the council.

“I’m free now," she told reporters, adding that she would be taking a two-week break to consult her family, signalling that she might revive her former political party, the Independent Democrats.

Ms De Lille is expected to officially step down on Wednesday at 19:00 local time (17:00 GMT).

Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop says his portraits are "a reinvented narrative of the history of black people, and therefore, the history of humanity and of the concept of freedom".

As his first solo exhibition in the UK comes to a close, he spoke to BBC Afrique about what inspires his work and why he believes history is so important.

Omar Victor Diop's LIBERTY / DIASPORA is on at Autograph, London, until 3 November.

Aboubakar Famau
BBC Africa, Dar es Salaam

Authorities in Tanzanian have announced the creation of a surveillance squad whose job it will be to identify gay people on social media and arrest them.

Paul Makonda, regional commissioner for the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, said the 17-member team would comprise of state officials from the Tanzania Communications Authority, the police and media practitioners.

Their mandate would be to scrutinise social media platforms to identify people who engage in same sex relationships.

At a news conference, Mr Makonda also appealed to city residents to delete any nude pictures from their phones, warning that strict measures would be taken against pornography.

He warned human rights groups that homosexuality was illegal in Tanzania.

However, there is no law prohibiting homosexuality in Tanzania, although sodomy is a criminal offence punishable by life imprisonment.

Public rhetoric against homosexuality has been on the rise in the country since President John Magufuli’s election in 2015.

Several medical clinics accused of promoting homosexuality have been shut down mostly in Dar es Salam, forcing members of the LGBT community to live in secrecy.

Kennedy Gondwe
BBC News, Lusaka

Zambia has lost one of its top female football referees after she succumbed on Wednesday morning to injuries sustained in an accident on Saturday.

Leah Namukonda, one of two female Fifa accredited officials, died at Ndola Central Hospital in northern Zambia where she was admitted.

She had gone to see a friend hours after officiating a domestic league match and she was involved in a road accident, according to Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) Vice-President Rix Mweemba.

“We are devastated as an association because she was one of the few female referees we have... it's very sad because we were one strong family," he said.

Before Namukonda’s death, Zambia had two Fifa female referees and two assistants.

Gladys Lengwe is now the only female Fifa-accredited referee.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

Cameroon says its military has shot dead four separatist rebels who they blame for the death of a US pastor near the town of Bamenda on Tuesday.

Charles Trumann Wesco arrived in north-west Cameroon earlier this month with his wife and eight children.

It is not yet known if he was targeted or whether he was killed by a stray bullet.

The Cameroon government said Mr Wesco died in hospital after being shot in the head by the separatists.

It said the military pursued the rebels and the four separatists were killed during an exchange of fire.

It has not been possible to independently verify the government's version of events.

Mayeni Jones
BBC News, Lagos

Image source, AFP

The Prince of Wales and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, will arrive in The Gambia later today, for the start of a nine-day tour of West Africa.

The royal couple will be visiting Commonwealth countries in the region.

The tour follows the selection of Prince Charles to succeed the Queen as head of the organisation by Commonwealth leaders in April.

Their first visit to Gambia will mark the county’s return to the Commonwealth after its former president - Yahya Jammeh - pulled out of the organisation calling it an "extension of colonialism".

After his ouster in 2017, his successor - Adama Barrow - began the process of rejoining the 53-member organisation. The Gambia was readmitted in February.

They are also set to visit Ghana and Nigeria.

Our colleagues at BBC Monitoring are following the ongoing Peace Day celebrations in South Sudan's capital, Juba.

They have spotted a journalist joining in a dance at Freedom Square where thousands have gathered to mark what they hope is the end of a brutal civil war.

The war began in 2013 after a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar.

President Kiir is hosting regional leaders and also welcoming back Mr Machar, who has been in exile for two years.

The two leaders signed a peace deal that would see Mr Machar become one of five vice-presidents.

(Scroll down for earlier updates)