That's all from BBC Africa Live for now. Keep up-to-date with what's happening across the continent by listening to the Africa Today podcast check the BBC News website.

A reminder of today's wise words:

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

And we leave you with this picture of a crowned sifaka, an endangered type of lemur from Madagascar. It's one of our favourite photos this week.

Image source, AFP

Larry Madowo
BBC Africa Business Editor

On International Women's Day we're looking at one industry where there is a massive shortfall in women - coding.

Only around 30% of all female students across the world select subjects related to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (Stem), according to UN data, external.

But change is coming in Africa - as women are teaching themselves to code.

Co-founder of African cryptocurrency exchange BuyCoins, Ire Aderinokun told the BBC's daily business programme for African audiences Money Daily that a lot of women are taught that "Stem in general is just not for them".

But she took matters into her own hands.

"I am almost completely self-taught," she said.

"I just learnt by looking at websites and doing online courses so that there was nobody who could actually stop me from learning and getting the education I needed to have the role that I have."

Watch the full episode of Money Daily here:

Ishaq Khalid
BBC Africa, Abuja

The police in Bauchi state, Nigeria, say they have arrested about 100 people in connection with plans to cause chaos during the governorship election due to take place on Saturday.

Nigerians are to elect their powerful state governors and legislators two weeks after the presidential election that gave President Muhammadu Buhari a second four-year term.

The police commissioner in Bauchi state, Ali Janga, told a news conference that the arrests were carried out in the last few days.

The main opposition party in the state, the PDP, said that more than 300 of their supporters have been arrested in a move to intimidate the opposition.

But the police chief says the figures given by the opposition are incorrect and denied the allegations that those arrested were only supporters of the opposition.

Mr Janga said the arrests cut across different political parties, including supporters of the ruling APC.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

UN experts say there is a real opportunity for peace to be restored after years of conflict in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic Of Congo.

Some 1.5 million people are currently displaced due to the violence involving rebels and government troops which began in 2016.

The head of the UN human rights team investigating the violence, Bacre Ndiaye, told the BBC that there was a real opportunity for a formal process of demobilisation and reconciliation after hundreds of fighters recently surrendered their weapons.

Correspondents say the fact that the new Congolese President, Felix Tshisekedi, is from the region has boosted the prospects of peace in Kasai.

A 37-year-old Ugandan mother has been jailed for 11 years in the UK for mutilated her three-year-old daughter at their family home in London.

This makes her the first person in the UK to be convicted of female genital mutilation (FGM).

Sentencing at the Old Bailey, Mrs Justice Whipple said: "Let's be clear - FGM is a form of child abuse."

FGM is banned in both the UK and Uganda.

During the trial, the woman claimed that in August 2017 her daughter climbed up to get a biscuit and "fell on metal and it's ripped her private parts".

Medics alerted police to the girl's injuries after they treated her at a London hospital.

The child "lost a significant amount of blood as a result of the injuries... delivered and inflicted on her", jurors were told.

Police said they found evidence of "witchcraft" in the woman's home, including limes stuffed with written curses:

Image source, Met Police

Read more on the BBC News website.

Several MPs from Algeria's ruling FLN party have resigned to join the mass anti-government protests, Reuters news agency quotes private Ashourouq TV station as saying.

Tens of thousands of people are marching in the Algerian capital, Algiers, against ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's decision to seek re-election for a fifth term.

Image source, Getty Images

The news agency adds that, in an unusual move, one of the most popular imams in Algiers did not pray for the president as he normally does every Friday.

Instead he only wished the best for Algeria and its people.

Monica Geingos is a lawyer, entrepreneur and the first lady of Namibia.

Before marrying President Hage Geingob, she was a successful businesswoman.

Since taking on the role of first lady in 2015, she has also become a UNAids special advocate for young women and adolescent girls.

She told BBC Africa's Lebo Diseko why she uses her voice to promote gender equality.

She was marking International Women's day.

And on that theme, our colleagues across BBC Africa have listed a few more females who have been singled out as role models:

Image source, AFP

Algerian businessman Rachid Nekkaz has been arrested at a hospital in Geneva where the country's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is reportedly being treated, Swiss police told AFP news agency.

The police spokesman told AFP that the hospital had filed a complaint for trespassing.

Mr Nekkaz is quoted as saying that he wanted to know the condition of the elusive president.

"There are 40 million Algerians who want to know where the president is," Mr Nekkaz told the crowd of a few dozen people that had assembled outside the hospital.

Mr Bouteflika has been at the hospital for nearly two weeks receiving what his office has called routine medical check-ups, AFP adds. The hospital has not confirmed whether the president is there.

Mr Nekkaz had bid to run against Mr Bouteflika as president but appears to have been stopped under a law which bans candidates who have ever possessed a nationality other than Algerian.

Instead his cousin, a car mechanic also called Rachid Nekkaz has entered and the businessman says he will serve as his campaign manager.

The presidential election is on 18 April.

Image source, AFP

Chris Ewokor
BBC Africa, Abuja

Nigeria holds elections for the powerful state governors on Saturday, two weeks after its presidential election.

The stakes are high - state governors are very influential in Nigeria so gubernatorial elections are keenly contested.

Winners usually control huge budgets, bigger than those of several neighbouring countries, and could determine the success or failure of the central government.

Many are seeing it as a further show of strength between the governing APC party and the main opposition PDP. The presidential election last month saw incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari defeating his closest rival Atiku Abubakar.

Security is a major concern in this election. Fears of possible election-related violence has led to a massive deployment of security personnel across the country.

Image source, AFP

Large crowds have gathered in the Algerian capital, Algiers, for yet another protest against four-term President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Image source, AFP

Image source, AFP

Image source, AFP

The demonstrations - now in their third week - were triggered by the ailing president's decision to seek re-election for a fifth term in April.

Mr Bouteflika has ruled Algeria for 20 years but has rarely been seen in public since he had a stroke in 2013.

He has warned that the protests could plunge the country into "chaos".

Read more on the BBC News website.

Mohanad Hashim
BBC Africa

A video showing Sudanese armed forces appearing to dare citizens to confront them has generated widespread anger.

It went viral on Sudanese social media pages after it was posted on the Facebook account of human rights activist Najla Sid Ahmed on Thursday night.

The scene captures the moment Sudanese security forces arrive in Burri, a residential district of the capital Khartoum. It is not clear when the video was originally filmed.

Some of the foot soldiers can be heard taunting residents, including an old man who was shouted at and ordered to go into his house.

The person filming the video is heard calling the demonstrators “house lizards" and accuses them of "hiding in their holes”.

He dares the “lions of Burri”, the name used by local activists and protesters to refer to themselves, to show themselves and face the forces, before asking if they “had run to their mothers”.

The award-winning Sudanese journalist Faisal Mohammed Salih called the video a “moral scandal” in a post on Facebook, external.

“Until an official reaction or statement is issued, this video remains a declaration of the official collapse of what has remained of the symbolic state authority”, he said.

Anti-government protests started in December and have continued even after a ban on public gatherings was put in place.

Jonathan Paye-Layleh
BBC Africa, Monrovia

There is growing anger in Liberia over a video posted on social media and widely circulated on Facebook that shows two naked women being dragged through the streets as a group of young men call on them to confess to being witches.

The video of the shocking assault was filmed in the south-east Liberian county of Sinoe.

A former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Gloria Scott has launched a campaign to get members of parliament in the area to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice.

Violence against women is common in Liberia but those behind the attacks are rarely punished.

BBC World Service

Image source, Reuters

Public transport has been suspended in the Algerian capital, Algiers, ahead of another day of protests against plans by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to seek a fifth term in office.

Trains, buses and metros are affected. Since they began two weeks ago, the demonstrations across the country have been peaceful.

But the president has warned that unnamed domestic or foreign groups might infiltrate the protests and plunge Algeria into chaos.

Mr Bouteflika - who's been in power for 20 years - has rarely appeared in public since he suffered a stroke in 2013. He's currently in hospital in Switzerland.

Read more:

• Algeria braces for massive protests
• 'Bouteflika hasn't paid for his pizza'

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

Image source, Getty Images

Malawi's President Peter Mutharika has set up a commission of inquiry to investigate attacks against people with albinism.

The commission, headed by a retired supreme court judge, is expected to establish whether there is a trade in body parts and to find out why the justice system has been slow to convict perpetrators.

People with albinism in Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania have been killed because of the mistaken belief that rituals involving parts of their bodies can bring good luck and wealth.

On Wednesday, police in Malawi blocked a protest march by dozens of people with albinism who were trying to present a petition to the president following a spike in attacks.

A viral video of a 19-year-old university student appearing to overdose before her death has shocked Kenyans on social media.

In the 26-second video Fridah Makena appears to be taking white tablets and forcing them down with a glass of water.

She died on Friday 1 March, reports the Standard newspaper, external.

Ms Makena allegedly shared the video and photos of the pills with friends on WhatsApp earlier last week, the Daily Nation reports, external.

The newspaper reports that her friends said she had had a misunderstanding with her boyfriend before the incident.

But, it goes on to say that her family now denies this, indicating in her eulogy at her funeral on Thursday that she had died of diabetes, a condition they said she had been grappling with since high school.

Here are some reactions from tweeters:

Image source, Getty Images

The exact whereabouts of Algeria’s ailing president are not clear, but a report on a French TV channel with secret footage suggested that Abdelaziz Bouteflika may be at the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), external – and as a result the Swiss institution has been inundated with calls.

One caller suggested he had been delivering pizzas for the 82-year-old leader but had not been paid, the hospital spokesman Nicolas de Saussure told the BBC’s Focus on Africa radio programme.

He said the sudden rise in calls began on Tuesday:

Mr de Saussure went on to say that HUG could not “confirm or contradict the presence of the president in our hospital” and it would never give out any information about patients or about their health.

He suggested that people should find some other form of protest.

Big demonstrations are expected in the North Africa nation on Friday against Mr Bouteflika's decision to run for a fifth term in office in elections next month.

The octogenarian is rarely seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013 and the Algerian authorities say he was transferred to a hospital in Switzerland, without specifying which institution, on 24 February for routine medical checks.

Image source, Getty Images

You may also be interested in:

• The president who doesn't speak
• Beginning of the end?

According to the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, malaria is the largest factor of disease in Africa.

Dr Richard Idro is a neurologist and paediatrician from Makerere University and Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda.

He's just been awarded the inaugural Greenwood Africa Award for his work on malaria and his research around a hidden cost of the infection among children who survive the disease but are left with neurological problems.

He told Newsday says long term complications of Malaria can include speech problems and epilepsy:

For the second day, thousands of people are protesting in Ethiopia's Oromia region.

This is the town of Aweday, where people were chanting "Addis Ababa belongs to the Oromo":

The protests follow the decision by the Addis Ababa administration to sell units of houses.

Protesters say the government did not pay enough compensation to local people for the land the houses are built on.

The controversy over the ownership of the land started five years ago when the local authority unveiled a master plan aimed at expanding the city.

A journalist with the BBC Afaan Oromoo website has tweeted a video of the latest protest in Aweday:

Today's African proverb:

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