Tuesday's African proverb:

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Welcome to BBC Africa Live where we will bring you the latest news from around the continent.

BBC Africa Live
Dickens Olewe

That's all from today's BBC Africa Live page. 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 Monday's proverb:

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

And we leave you with this picture from Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa says he is "quite angry" with the state-owned electricity firm Eskom over the rationing of power in the country for the first time since December.

The company said homes and businesses would experience power cuts, known as load-shedding, because of "continued pressure" on the national grid.

Power cuts, without warning, could last for about four hours at a time.

Mrl Ramaphosa said Eskom had reached the stage of "dysfunctionality".

"Energy is really the important generator of economic growth in our country and we are addressing it," he said.

Mr Ramaphosa also raised concern that many people were failing to pay for electricity, causing a revenue shortfall at Eskom.

"Many of our people are not paying for electricity, and users must know if we want electricity, and if we want Eskom to survive, we have got to pay for the electricity that we use, just like you pay for the airtime that you use for the cellphone," he added.

BBC World Service

There are reports from Cameroon that at least four people were burnt alive - trapped inside a hospital in the restive south-west of the country that was set on fire.

The hospital, in the town of Kumba, was serving a large area because several other health facilities in the same district had shut down due to a separatist rebellion.

The government has blamed previous hospital attacks on Anglophone separatists. But there have also been reports of soldiers targeting hospitals in the belief that separatist fighters were being treated there. It is not yet known who was behind the attack on this one.

The rebellion began after protests calling for better treatment of the Anglophone minority were violently broken up by the security forces in 2016.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

There are reports from Ethiopia that seven churches were attacked over the weekend in the south of the country.

Some of the evangelical churches were set ablaze and others were completely destroyed.

This happened in Alaba Kulito, a town in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region.

Ethiopia's state broadcaster said the attacks followed fake news reports on social media which said several mosques had been attacked.

The predominantly Muslim populated area had been calm until the attacks on the churches.

Last year in other parts of the same southern region, long-standing grievances between ethnic groups over land, borders, and rights led to communal clashes which displaced tens of thousands of people.

Image source, .

Former Nigerian international defender Taiwo Ogunjobi has died suddenly in Ibadan, south-western Nigeria.

His death, at the age of 65, comes 35 years to the day after he made his debut for Nigeria against Morocco in an Olympic qualifier, which in 1984 was not restricted to under-23 sides.

"He was in hospital on Saturday and doctors ordered a bed rest, but he passed away Monday morning in Ibadan," his personal assistant and Osun United FC spokesman, Tunde Shamsudeen, told BBC Sport.

He served as secretary-general of then Nigeria Football Association between 2002 and 2005, and was member of the NFF Executive Committee between 2006 and 2010.

Read more of the BBC Sport website

Insecurity is one of the key campaign issues many politicians are promising to solve in Nigeria’s elections this week.

In the country's north-east, Islamist militant group Boko Haram has been fighting government forces for the past 10 years.

The conflict there has left more than 7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and almost two million people forced from their homes.

So what do those that have been displaced by the conflict make of the elections and campaign promises?

BBC World Service

An Egyptian court has sentenced three police officers to three years in jail for torturing a detainee to death, reports the privately-owned Youm7 newspaper.

It adds that a doctor was also given a one-year prison term for falsifying a medical report on the killing.

The court in the Sohag region, south of the capital, Cairo, heard that the officers had beaten their victim to death as they tried to force him to confess to a murder.

Human rights activists say torture is practiced systematically in Egypt's jails.

John Otunga works for Sentinel, an organisation that tries to build peace between different communities in Kenya's Tana River, by using technology.

Community members are encouraged to use an app and a community radio station, to check the validity of rumours, and therefore reduce tensions caused by misinformation.

Image source, AFP

The government of Zimbabwe has confirmed that its Vice-President Constatino Chiwenga is receiving medical treatment abroad.

This comes days after he dismissed reports of being airlifted to South Africa.

Deputy Information Minister Energy Mutodi said on social media that Mr Chiwenga was recovering well from a minor abdominal ailment in the Indian capital, Delhi.

The former head of Zimbabwe's military played a key role in ousting former President Robert Mugabe in 2017.

Correspondents say he is widely seen as a potential successor to the current leader, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The president last week denied there was a power struggle between himself and his deputy.

The BBC's Africa editor has snapped this picture of a supporter of Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari ahead of tightly contested elections on 16 February:

Image source, AFP

Martin Fayulu, who finished second in the Democratic Republic of Congo presidential election on 30 December last year, has proposed - in a letter to the African Union (AU) - that a new poll be held again in six months, news agency AFP reports.

Mr Fayulu, who was the candidate for an opposition coalition, repeated his allegation that the vote result had been rigged and that the electoral commission known as Ceni had "quite simply fabricated the results it published".

President Felix Tshisekedi, who is attending a two-day AU summit in Ethiopia, was declared winner of the election with 38.5% of the vote, against Mr Fayulu's 34.8%.

Mr Fayulu says that he won 60% of the vote saying that Ceni's results leaked to the media backed his claim.

The influential Catholic Church, which says it had 40,000 electoral monitors across the country, also said Mr Tshisekedi did not win the election.

The Constitutional Court, however, dismissed an official petition from Mr Fayulu.

Mr Tshisekedi is the first opposition challenger to win presidential election since the DR Congo gained independence in 1960.

He took over from former President Joseph Kabila who had ruled the country for 18 years.

BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

A UN judicial expert says the Nigerian president broke international rules when he recently suspended the country's Chief Justice.

President Muhammadu Buhari suspended Walter Onnoghen last month over allegations that the judge had failed to declare his assets.

The UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Diego Garcia-Sayan, said such a decision should be taken by an independent judicial council or a court.

He said dismissing judges without following legal procedures was incompatible with the independence of the judiciary.

The suspension of the chief justice has drawn international criticism.

As Nigeria's top judge he could play a key role in any disputes that arise from this weekend's elections.

Nigerians will vote on 16 February and one of the main opposition candidates aiming for the presidency is former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar.

A key issue facing Nigeria is insecurity, including defeating the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram. President Muhammadu Buhari, a former general, has struggled to quell the threat posed by the jihadists.

The BBC's Newsday presenter James Copnall asked Mr Abubakar why he thought he could do any better.

He also has some views about his favourite team in the English Premier League - Arsenal.

Listen:

A South African journalist has shared dramatic footage of a new born baby being pulled out of a storm water drain in a residential area in the coastal city of Durban.

It is unclear how the baby girl ended up there.

According to Rescue Care paramedics spokesperson Garrith Jamieson, paramedics and emergency services conducted the rescue operation on the corner of Barracuda and Herring Way in Newlands East, outside Durban, TimesLive reports. , external

“We can actually hear the baby crying. We have gained access to the pipe, paramedics are just clearing around the pipe and then they will break into the pipe,” Mr Jamieson said earlier about the operation.

The baby was airlifted to Albert Luthuli hospital.

One of the top trending topics on Twitter in Kenya is #FindCarolineMwatha, external

Ms Mwatha, who is a leading campaigner against extra-judicial killings by the police, has been missing for six days.

She is a founding member of the Dandora Community Justice Centre (DCJC) which documents cases of extrajudicial killings in Dandora estate in the eastern part of the capital, Nairobi.

Kenya's rights group Missing Voices , externaldescribes Ms Mwatha as "a gallant human rights defender".

It says her friends and family have reported to the police that she is missing but have also been going around hospitals and morgues looking for her.

Amnesty International has also joined the search:

Image source, Inec

Nigeria's electoral commission (Inec) has described the burning down of one of its offices in Plateau state as an "emerging trend".

Nigerians go to the polls on Saturday to elect the next president.

In a statement Inec says that the weekend's incident was the second this month and calls on the police to provide extra security.

The police are investigating the cause of the fire, but these incidents happen every electoral cycle, says BBC Pidgin editor Adejuwon Soyinka.

Inec says that in the weekend's fire nearly 6,000 voters' cards were destroyed along with other election materials.

Read more about the Nigerian election:

• Does Nigeria's 'generation democracy' want to vote?
• How ‘godfathers’ influence politics

Image source, AFP

Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, told African leaders the West has much to learn from them about the treatment of refugees.

Speaking on Sunday during the opening day of the African Union summit in Ethiopia, he said the continent had kept borders open to millions of displaced people despite its limited resources.

Africa hosts more than a quarter of the world's refugees and internally displaced - a total of more than 20 million people.

Their plight is high on the summit's agenda, along with the AU's attempts to build a continent-wide free trade zone.

A deal was signed last year but it's yet to come into effect as only 19 countries have ratified the agreement.

Correspondents say the AU's new chairman, Egypt's President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi of Egypt is likely to be less effective at pushing that agreement through than his predecessor, Paul Kagame of Rwanda.

Image source, AFP

South Africa's Soweto Gospel Choir has won the Best World Music Album at the Grammys award ceremony in Los Angeles in the US.

It was the group's third win on its fifth nomination in the same category.

The award winning album Freedom was recorded in June 2018 as part of the group's tribute to the 100 Years of Mandela celebrations.

Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid campaigner who became South Africa's first black president, died in 2013 aged 95, last year's event marked what would have been his 100th birthday.

The Soweto Gospel Choir winning album features a selection of South African struggle songs including what Channel24 describes as, external a "scintillating" version of Johnny Clegg's Asimbonanga.

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa tweeted his congratulations to the group: