A survey conducted by Ethiopia's Amhara regional government has revealed that the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) carried out massive destruction and looting in five zones of the region, officials say.

The regional planning and development bureau, which co-ordinated the survey, said it had occurred in areas the rebels still held and in areas retaken from them.

The TPLF has not yet commented, but has previously denied similar allegations.

The head of the bureau, Animut Belete, said the total cost of the destruction was estimated to be 280bn Ethiopian birr ($5.8bn, $4.4bn), but the amount was likely to rise as more reports came in.

The survey covered 45 districts in five zones. It did not include the big city of Dessie or the industry hub of Kombolcha.

He said the destruction was severe within the agriculture sector.

"Three agricultural research institutes, vehicles, tractors and crops and irrigation infrastructure have been severely looted and damaged; livestock killed, looted and eaten," Mr Animut told BBC Amharic.

Hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, businesses, roads and tourist sites had also been damaged, he said.

"Students, workers and community members who have been trained in the enterprises have lost their jobs," he added.

Image source, Amhara regional government

In the past few day, Ethiopia's federal government said it had retaken key towns and cities from the TPLF in Amhara and the neighbouring region of Afar. This included Lalibela, a Unesco world heritage site famous for its rock-hewn churches.

The TPLF said it made a "strategic withdrawal".

The federal government previously said that more than 2,000 schools and about 1,500 hospitals and health centres had been damaged and looted by the rebels in Amhara and Afar.

The TPLF launched an offensive in the two regions in an attempt to reach the capital, Addis Ababa, and the border with Djibouti.

It accused the Ethiopian military and allies forces of committing widespread atrocities in its stronghold of Tigray - allegations which they denied.

Nomsa Maseko
BBC Southern Africa correspondent

Image source, AFP

The Omicron variant has now become dominant in South Africa and is driving the increase in new infections.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases has said more than 70% of all the virus genomes it has sequenced last month had been of the new variant.

South Africa recorded just over 8,500 new Covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours. There’s been a sustained increase in new Covid-19 infections in many parts of the country.

The increase has been reported in seven of the country’s nine provinces, according to the health department.

New infections are expected to increase in what is now the beginning of the fourth wave in South Africa.

The health department has said there has also been a slight increase in hospital admissions.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases has said most of those hospitalised have not been vaccinated against coronavirus.

The WHO has said the new variant has been detected in at least 24 countries around the world.

Read more:

• South Africa 'punished' for detecting new Omicron variant

Two women entrepreneurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo have founded a mobile app that helps keep taxi users safe.

Ursula Ndombele and Magalie Bueyasadila founded Hoja app that helps people get information about their driver.

The users scan the a QR code poster on the taxi to get all information about their ride.

A third of Kinshasa drivers have signed up and they say its good for business as clients trust them more.

Kidnappings in taxis are common in Kinshasa.

Police say there up to five incidents every week but the last month has seen a decline to only five incidents the whole month.

The Hoja app founders hope to expand presence to other Africa cities.

Here is the BBC's Victoria Rubadiri with the whole story:

BBC Monitoring
The world through its media

At least five officials working for Nigeria’s Borno state ministry of works were on Wednesday abducted by suspected militants linked to the Islamic State West African Province (Iswap).

Borno state’s commissioner for works, Yerima Saleh, confirmed the incident and said three vehicles, including a Toyota Hilux and two tippers, were also seized by the militants.

Mr Saleh added that the victims were en route to inspect a road project near Chibok town.

Damboa and Chibok towns are close to Sambisa forest, which is the main hideout for militants in the region.

Borno is among three north-eastern Nigeria states that have endured a protracted jihadist insurgency that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions of people.

Image source, AFP

A group of Rwandan activists have demanded the cancellation of Congolese musician Koffi Olomidé's concert scheduled for Saturday in the capital, Kigali.

They are citing the musician's 2019 conviction by a court in France for statutory rape of one of his former dancers when she was 15.

In a statement, the activists said allowing the Congolese star to perform at the concert "violates commitments Rwanda has made to achieve gender equality and ending violence against women and girls".

The group is composed of 29 organisations involved in campaigns against gender violence in Rwanda.

The concert organisers said they were “not in a position to pronounce ourselves on the moral and criminal allegations” and promised “an entertaining event”.

Olomidé is a huge star of rumba and soukous which are popular across much of Africa.

He received the AFRIMA legend award during the All Africa Music Awards in Lagos last month.

He has been in trouble with the law several times before, including assaulting one of his dancers in Kenya in 2016 and allegedly assaulting a photographer in Zambia in 2018.

Nichola Mandil
BBC News, Juba

South Sudan’s government has promised to end child marriages by 2030 in line with the African Union's campaign to achieve this goal on the continent by then.

Paramount chiefs from 10 regional states and the three administrative areas are meeting in the capital, Juba, for the second national conference on ending child marriages.

Among the proposals suggested at the conference include one from the Swedish ambassador Joachim Waern for a law criminalising child marriages.

South Sudan is one of 40 countries in the world with the highest rates of child marriages. A survey conducted in 2010 found that about 7% of girls marry before the age of 15, and 40% before the age of 18.

South Sudan's gender ministry says only 6.2% of girls in South Sudan complete primary school, with one out of five dropping out of secondary school due to pregnancies.

Those most affected are between the ages of 15 of 19 years.

Image source, AFP

Cameroonian opposition leader Maurice Kamto was on Wednesday detained at a hotel in the country's largest city, Douala, where he was scheduled to launch his latest book.

The leader of the Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (MRC) missed his book signing at Hotel Vallée des Princes, eliciting concern from his supporters.

His special adviser, Albert Dzongang, told local media that he had spoken to him on phone and he was fine.

Mr Kamto's movement was restricted by the police under instructions from what his adviser termed as a "mysterious order giver".

The opposition leader has in the past been detained an arrested by the authorities.

In some of the instances he was charged in court for various offences that government critics said were unfair targeting of opposition figures.

South Africa has recorded a sharp increase in coronavirus infections, with just over 8,500 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours. It represents a doubling of cases from Monday.

Health officials believe the newly discovered Omicron variant may be fuelling the surge but say so far it is presenting milder symptoms in mainly younger populations.

Dr Mary Stephen is Technical Officer at the WHO Regional office for Africa.

(Picture: Vials labelled with COVID-19 vaccine with a South African flag in background. Copyright: Reuters)

BBC Monitoring
The world through its media

The Chinese embassy has urged its citizens to evacuate three provinces in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo as soon as possible.

The notice follows several cases of armed robbery and kidnappings of Chinese nationals working in mines in recent days.

The three provinces are North Kivu, Ituri and South Kivu.

Chinese nationals in areas at risk have been asked to report to the embassy by 10 December.

BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

South Africa has recorded a sharp increase in coronavirus infections which have doubled across the country since Monday.

Health officials say the newly discovered Omicron variant may be fuelling the surge, although it isn't clear how many of the new cases it accounts for.

Some 8,500 Covid infections have been registered in the last 24 hours.

South Africa was the first country to detect the highly mutated new variant which was announced last week.

The United States has identified its first Omicron case in someone who had returned to the country from South Africa.

Many questions about the new variant remain to be answered, including whether it is more transmissible and how much protection current vaccines provide.

BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

A new study has found that Madagascar's current food crisis has been caused mainly by factors other than global warming - contradicting a recent UN report which blamed it on climate change.

The report - by a group of international scientists, published by World Weather Attribution - blamed poverty and weather conditions that were only minimally affected by global warming.

It said in two consecutive seasons in southern Madagascar, rainfall had been 40% below average, causing severe drought and crop failures.

Last month the UN World Food Programme declared that Madagascar was the first country experiencing famine-like conditions as result of climate change.

More than 90% of people in southern Madagascar live in poverty and farmers rely on each season’s rain.

Emmanuel Igunza
BBC News, Nairobi

Image source, AFP

The African Union and United Nations have jointly criticised travel restrictions put on several Southern African countries following the discovery of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that the restrictions could lead to "travel apartheid", describing them as "deeply unfair, punitive and ineffective" in stopping the spread of the variant.

He said Africans should not be collectively punished for sharing health information with the world.

The AU chairperson Chairperson Mahamat Faki said wealthier nations should help the continent increase its vaccination rates which currently stand at under 6% while some developed countries were already giving third booster shots.

It comes just a day after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Nigerian counterpart asked countries to reverse the travel bans.

The World Health Organization says at least 23 countries globally have now reported cases of Omicron.

Read more:

• How worrying is the new Covid variant?
• South Africans fear impact of new variant measures

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Tigray rebels took control of Lalibela, famous for its 13th Century rock-hewn churches, in August.

That's all from the BBC Africa Live team for now. We'll be back on Thursday morning Nairobi time.

Until then there will be an automated service and you can find the latest updates on the BBC News website, or listen to our podcast Africa Today.

A reminder of our African proverb of the day:

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

And we leave you with this shot of a nail polish vendor in Maputo, Mozambique by photographer Grég E on Instagram:

Ishaq Khalid
BBC News, Abuja

Image source, AFP

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has once again urged countries that have put travel bans on southern African due to the discovery of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 to reverse these decisions, describing them as discriminatory, unscientific and counterproductive.

He was speaking at a joint press conference with the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in the presidential palace in Abuja.

A number of western, and African, countries have recently banned travellers from several southern African nations after the Omicron variant was detected in the region.

The region's leaders are united against such blanket bans because of their potentially considerable and long-lasting economic damage, Mr Ramaphosa said.

Mr Ramaphosa and Mr Buhari had a closed-door meeting and then announced that they had signed a memorandum of understanding in several areas including youth development and women and child advancement.

The agreement will enhance meaningful interaction between the youth of the two largest economies in Africa, Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari said.

In recent years, xenophobic attacks in South Africa targeting other African nationals including Nigerians have caused tension.

The South African leader is on a four-nation tour of West Africa.

Yasine Mohabuth
Port Louis, Mauritius

Image source, Mélanie Valère-Cicéron

The parliament in Mauritius has passed an amendment bill that seeks to introduce new regulation for independent media despite some opposition.

The Independent Broadcasting Authority Amendment Bill was passed without amendments on Tuesday night

It creates an independent broadcasting review panel whose three members are to be appointed by the prime minister. It introduces penalties of up to 500,000 Mauritian rupees ($11,400; £8,600) for violations of the law.

It also requires private radio stations to renew their licences on a yearly basis instead of three years as has been the case.

The private radios along with opposition MPs and some campaign groups had opposed the amendments.

The government said the amendment was in order to provide a better legal framework to regulate the licensed media.

A Mauritian diaspora organisation has asked the president not to give his assent to the bill which restricts media freedom, amid a plan to challenge the changes in the country’s highest court.

Mauritius liberalised its airwaves in 2002 and the Independent Broadcasting Authority issued licenses to three private radio stations, putting an end to the state broadcaster’s monopoly.

However, the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation retains a monopoly on television channels.

Ahmed Rouaba
BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

A court in Libya's western city of Zawiya has ordered the electoral commission to drop Gen Khalifa Haftar's name from the list of presidential candidates.

Gen Haftar, who led a rebellion against the National Unity Government between 2019 and 2020, caused controversy when he filed his paperwork to run for president.

Military prosecutors had advised the electoral commission to stop processing his application until he was questioned over accusations of human rights abuses.

They also advised against the candidacy of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the country's former leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

Last week, a court in Misrata sentenced Gen Haftar to death in absentia for bombing a military college in the city in 2019.

He is also wanted in the US.

The military commander, whose forces control the east of the country and parts of the south, has the right to appeal against the Zawiya court’s decision but he is unlikely to attend the hearing as he is under an arrest warrant.

He has not commented on the various allegations against him.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

Ugandan ground troops have crossed into the Beni region of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo to fight rebels linked to the Islamic State group, the BBC has learnt.

Both countries have confirmed that joint air and artillery strikes against ADF bases had begun.

The government in Kampala blames the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) for a series of recent bombings in the country.

The Ugandan opposition has strongly criticised the deployment which had not been approved by parliament.

Previous incursions, including one to South Sudan in 2013, had also not received parliamentary approval.

Uganda's role in DR Congo has been extremely controversial with troops in the past fighting soldiers from Rwanda, carrying out atrocities and plundering the country’s natural resources.

Read more: Inside view of the ADF

Peter Mwai
BBC Reality Check

Image source, Getty Images

Kenyans online have been pointing out errors made by President Uhuru Kenyatta during a national address on Tuesday, outlining what he said he’d achieved during his eight years in office.

He praised the army for helping revive the previously loss-making state-run Kenya Meat Commission (KMC), but got his sums wrong in the process.

He said under the army, the KMC had collected one million Kenyan shillings ($8,900; £6,700) each day at one of its new retail outlets.

“This one million translates to 30 million every month, and 3.6 billion Kenyan shillings annually in just one outlet,” he said.

But that doesn’t add up. With 12 months in a year, the correct figure should be 360 million Kenyan shillings - not 3.6 billion.

President Kenyatta also appears to have got it wrong when talking about Kenya’s expansion in power-generating capacity during his term.

He said when he took over in 2013, capacity was at 1,300 megawatts, and that the figure had doubled to 2,600 megawatts.

"This translates to 325 megawatts installed every year under my administration," he said.

Again, that seems to be an error because an increase of 1,300 megawatts over eight years equals around 162 megawatts a year - not 325 megawatts.