On Thursday, Ivory Coast and Chelsea Didier Drogba legend will finally retire from playing.

And the 40-year-old could go out on a high if his current team wins a play-off final in the second tier of American football.

Drogba plays for Phoenix Rising in the US, a team he partly owns and has led to the United Soccer League final.

The team is bidding for a spot in Major League Soccer, the top division in the United States.

Berke Bakay is the Phoenix owner who took Drogba to the club - he has been speaking to the BBC's Newsday programme:

A freelance photographer has tweeted a picture of Drogba ahead of Thursday's big game:

Jonathan Beale
BBC defence correspondent

Britain is to step up its support for Commonwealth veterans who served in the UK's Armed Forces.

The Department for International Development (DfID) says thousands of veterans from more than 30 countries - many who fought during World War Two - will receive funds for two meals a day to prevent them from going hungry.

Around four million Commonwealth soldiers from the Indian sub-Continent, Africa and the Caribbean fought in the British Army during World War Two.

Some now in their nineties are among the thousands of veterans in need of support.

UK International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt says the UK still owes them a debt of gratitude.

She says the British public would be shocked that some are now living in poverty.

DfID has tweeted a video of a 91-year-old Ghanaian veteran who fought in Burma:

Hundreds of buffaloes have drowned in a river on the border between Botswana and Namibia, the Botswana government has said in a series of tweets.

Early investigations suggest that this unusually large herd was "being chased by a pride of lions", it added.

BBC World Service

The head of the African Union Commission has called for a renewed effort to try to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Cameroon.

Moussa Faki Mahamat's call for an inclusive dialogue comes a day after dozens of school children were reunited with theirparents - two days after being kidnapped.

They were reportedly held by Anglophone separatists.

The principal and one of her teachers are still in captivity.

Mr Mahamat called on the perpetrators to be identified and brought to justice.

A peace conference, organised by religious leaders, is due to take place later this month however it is not clear whether the Cameroonian government or the separatist rebels will attend.

Activists claim the country's French-speaking majority is marginalising the English-speaking minority.

Watch this video as the BBC’s Africa Security Correspondent Tomi Oladipo explores the growing conflict:

Christopher Farai Charamba
BBC Africa

At least 47 people have been killed in Zimbabwe when two buses collided outside the small town of Rusape, in the east of the country, the police say.

One of the buses veered into oncoming traffic while trying to overtake a haulage lorry, an eyewitness told local media.

Two children were among those killed while 70 others were injured.

The local mortuary was running out of space to accommodate the bodies and funeral services were asked to assist, a local administrator told The Herald.

The Deputy Transport Minister Fortune Chasi tweeted that the accident in Rusape was a “needless loss of lives”.

Zimbabwe experienced a 10% increase in road traffic accidents in 2017 according to statistics from the country's Traffic Safety Council.

Image source, CPJ

Journalists Angela Quintal and Muthoki Mumo, both working for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), were detained in Dar es Salaam by people who said they were Tanzanian immigration officials, the CPJ says.

In a statement, the CPJ says: "The officials searched the pair's belongings and would not return their passports when asked. Quintal and Mumo were then escorted from the hotel and have been taken to an unknown location."

They have since been released, but South Africa's foreign affairs ministry (Dirco) said its envoy will talk to the Tanzanian authorities about what happened:

AFP news agency quotes Dirco spokesperson Ndhivo Mabaya as saying their release came "after a lot of calls" but neither woman has had their passport returned.

There has been concern in recent months in Tanzania over restrictions on the freedom of the press.

BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

Prosecutors at the trial of the Rwandan political activist Diane Rwigara have asked for a 22-year prison sentence.

The critic of President Paul Kagame, who tried to run for president last year, denied charges of inciting insurrection and forging documents.

In a court in the capital, Kigali, she stood by her assertion that Rwanda's economy was mainly controlled by a governing party elite and she argued that the trial was meant to kill her off politically.

Her mother, Adeline Rwigara, was also in court accused of inciting insurrection - a term used to mean calling people to revolt - and promoting sectarianism.

The campaign group Amnesty International has called for the charges to be dropped arguing that freedom of expression should not be on trial in Rwanda.

A verdict is due next month.

Thursday's African proverb:

Image source, Getty Images

Click here and scroll to the bottom to send us your African proverbs.

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

Clare Spencer
BBC News

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 check in BBC News website.

A reminder of today's proverb:

Click here and scroll to the bottom to send us your African proverbs.

And we leave you with this ant's eye view of the sky scrapers in Angola's capital city, Luanda:

BBC World Service

Image source, Reuters

Some of the 78 schoolchildren abducted in Cameroon have been reunited with their parents in the north-western town of Bamenda.

The students were dropped off at a church on Tuesday - two days after being seized.

One of the students told the BBC that they had been held by the "Boys" - a common term for the Anglophone separatist rebels.

But there has been some confusion over who had kidnapped them.

Cameroon's government blamed the separatists rebels while the rebels said the government had stage-managed it to give them a bad name.

Some of those released are yet to be reunited with their parents, who have been told they still need medical care.

Image source, Getty Images

A new study raises hopes of saving the northern white rhino by creating rhino hybrids with the southern white rhino using IVF.

A victim of poaching, the northern white rhino population has been reduced to just two females, which are both unable to breed.

DNA evidence now shows the rhino is more closely related than previously thought to its southern white cousin.

An extensive analysis of DNA from living rhinos and museum specimens shows the northern and southern populations mixed and bred perhaps as recently as 14,000 years ago.

Read more from the BBC science team.

Ilhan Omar, who has become the first American-Somali to be elected to the US Congress, has expressed her determination to push for the protection of women and refugees.

Ms Omar, who fled civil war in Somalia as a child and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya, won Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District in the mid-term elections.

She is also the joint first Muslim woman to be elected to Congress, alongside Rashida Tlaib.

Somali-Americans have been celebrating her victory.

Image source, Getty Images

Officials have signed an agreement to build a bridge across the river that separates the cities of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, reports Bloomberg news agency, external.

Kinshasa is the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo while Brazzaville is the capital of the Republic of Congo and they sit just five miles (8 km) away from each other, on either side of the Congo river.

Previously the only way across the river was on "rusting" ferries, "flimsy" speed boats or a five-minute flight which goes twice a week, according to the UK-based Guardian newspaper, external.

Bloomberg says the project is estimated to cost $550m (£418m).

The route will be just shy of one mile (1,575-metres), Republic of Congo Spatial Planning Minister Jean-Jacques Bouya is quoted as saying.

Tesfalem Araia
BBC Tigrinya

Image source, Getty Images

The first person of Eritrean descent has been elected into the US House of Representatives.

Joe Neguse is the son of Eritrean refugee parents who moved to the US a year before he was born, in order to flee conflict in Eritrea.

He was elected as a Democrat congressman for Colorado's Second District in the US mid-term elections, winning 60% of the vote.

He is also Colorado’s first black Congressman and, at 34, the youngest of the nine representatives of the state.

In a tweet he said voters had made history:

Image source, Getty Images

It has been two weeks since Gabon's president fell ill in Saudi Arabia and the Gabonese public still don't know what's wrong with him.

Ali Bongo was at an economic forum in the capital Riyadh when he was taken to hospital.

The 59-year-old's spokesman Ike Ngouoni said at the time that doctors there had diagnosed him with "severe fatigue" and ordered bed rest, reports AFP news agency.

But since then there has been silence.

Earlier today, an AFP journalist, who went to Riyadh's King Faisal Hospital where Mr Bongo is being treated, was told that all information on the president's health was subject to either a "royal order" or authorisation from the Gabonese embassy.

The news agency adds that the silence has fuelled all kinds of rumours on social media

Mr Bongo took over as president from his father, Omar, who died in office in 2009.

Athuman Mtulya
BBC Africa

Police in Zanzibar, Tanzania, have arrested 10 men for allegedly conducting a same-sex marriage ceremony.

A senior police office told the BBC that the arrest was made on Saturday night at Pongwe Beach.

The 10 are being held at Chakwa police station in Unguja, the main island in the Zanzibar archipelago, and so far no charges have been brought against them.

Police are believed to have received a tip-off from members of public about the ceremony.

Six other men escaped after police raided their party, according to rights group Amnesty International.

Amnesty's East Africa Deputy Director Seif Magango said that it was "mind-boggling that the mere act of sitting in a pair can assume criminal proportions".

He added that he fears the men may have been subjected to a forced anal examination and urged the police to release them "immediately".

The development comes a week after Paul Makonda, the head of the administration for the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, formed a surveillance squad to track down homosexuals.

Tanzania's government, through a statement from the ministry of foreign affairs, however distanced itself from the move claiming that "Mr Makonda was only airing his personal opinion", not government policy.

Image source, Getty Images

BBC World Service

At a court in Kaduna in northern Nigeria, the Shia leader, Ibraheem Zakzaky, has denied all charges against him including inciting violence.

He was denied bail and is due back in court in January.

The leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria was arrested in 2015 after members of the sect blocked a military convoy - an incident that led to soldiers opening fire and killing around 300 Shia Muslims.

Last month hundreds of Shia protesters took to the streets of the capital, Abuja, calling for Ibraheem Zakzaky to be released.

Image source, AFP

The demonstrations turned violent and human rights group accuse the army of killing around fifty protesters. Police then arrested 400 Shia Muslims.

• Read More: Meeting Ibraheem Zakzaky

Jonathan Paye-Layleh
BBC Africa, Monrovia

Image source, EPA

Liberian police have arrested more than 40 people following massive looting at the facility of a Turkish gold mining company, reports say.

The looting was reportedly triggered by a collision between the company's pick-up truck and a motorcycle carrying four people.

The four on the motorcycle all died, while the driver of the pick-up truck survived.

Prime FM, a private Monrovia broadcaster, reported that angry local residents set the pick-up truck on fire before forcing their way into the company’s facility.

The radio station adds that looters took computers, glass for windows, and, crucially, harmful chemicals used for blasting rocks in search of gold.

People in Madagascar are casting their ballots today in the presidential election which EU election observers say is going smoothly, reports Reuters news agency.

There are 36 candidates in all - current President Hery Rajaonarimampianina is battling against two of his predecessors - Marc Ravalomanana and Andry Rajoelina.

Ahead of the election, the candidates have been criss-crossing the country attending rallies like this one for Mr Rajaonarimampianina:

Image source, AFP for

All over the country, T-shirts have been distributed, like this one for Mr Rajoelina:

Image source, AFP

And these people took to their motorbikes to give out flyers for Mr Ravalomanana:

Image source, AFP

Few analysts expect an outright winner in the first round. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, there will be a second round between two top candidates on 19 December.