Thomas Naadi
BBC Africa, Accra

Image source, ANAS SABIT-KASKIYA

Authorities in Ghana say they will introduce speed limit devices to prevent traffic accidents in the country, where an average of six people die on the roads every day.

Commercial vehicles with engine capacities of 3.5 litres or more will be targeted. The top speed will be set depending on the type of vehicle.

The announcement follows the deaths of more than 60 people in two separate accidents in the country on Friday.

Speeding, dangerous overtaking and drunk driving are just some of the major causes of accidents on Ghana’s roads.

Available statistics from the national road safety commission show that in the first two months of this year more than 400 people died in road accidents, while last year more than 2,000 such deaths were recorded.

Six Sudanese protesters have been sentenced to six months in prison for defying a ban on demonstrations.

A state of emergency was imposed last month aimed at inhibiting the widespread protests that began in December against President Omar al-Bashir's nearly 30-year rule.

AFP reports that the six protesters were sentenced by an emergency court in the capital's twin city of Omdurman.

"The six were accused of causing disturbances," Police Spokesman General Hashim Abdelrahim is quoted by AFP as saying.

Each of the six were also reportedly fined 1,500 Sudanese pounds ($31; £24).

More about Sudan:

• What's it like being a female protester in Sudan?
• How 'cheating husbands' are linked to the protests
• Sudan country profile

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

The aid agency, Mercy Corps, has warned that there can be no end in sight to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo unless "drastic action" is taken.

Health workers have been unable to contain the spread of the disease, spokesman Philippe Marcoux says, with about eight new cases every day.

Insecurity and mistrust have hampered the response. Three Ebola treatment centres have recently been attacked.

Mercy Corps says funds are urgently needed to pay for education programmes to help people understand how the disease is spread.

More than 1,000 people have contracted the virus during the current outbreak, which is the second-largest ever recorded.

More than 600 people have died since last August.

More on this story:

• Why Ebola keeps coming back
• Watch: Battling Ebola in DR Congo

Survivors of the powerful storm which hit southern Africa 11 days ago now face "a ticking bomb" of disease, warns the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Cresent (ICRC).

At least 700 people are known to have died across Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

The aid agency's head, Elhadj As Sy, says a high-level response is essential to prevent a serious outbreak of water-borne diseases like cholera and typhoid.

He says the risk is high partly because of conditions in shelters, describing one in Mozambique where 3,000 people are sharing six toilets in a building which is "half-flooded".

The ICRC has tripled its emergency appeal target from $10m to $30m (£23m).

The Disasters Emergency Committee Donations, a group which brings together 14 UK charities to provide and deliver aid, says it has now received $24 (£18m) to support efforts in southern Africa.

Meanwhile Mozambique's Land and Environment Minister, Celso Correa, says conditions for rescue are improving with roads re-opening to allow officials to access some of the areas that had been cut off by the floods.

Read more:

• Cyclone Idai: What are the immediate dangers?
• 'We saw 200 bodies by the roadside'

Image source, .BBC

Wang Li Hong Sooma, who moved to East Africa from China more than two decades ago, is determined to teach Ugandans how to speak Mandarin.

She and her Ugandan husband, Ayub Sooma, are organising nine-month intensive courses for secondary school teachers to learn China's dominant language.

The first 30 teachers have now completed their training and have started holding Mandarin classes in schools across the country.

The couple, who own their own secondary school on the outskirts of the capital, Kampala, met 26 years ago in Beijing, when Mr Sooma was studying at Tsinghua University.

Though at first, Mrs Wang says, it was not easy for them to be together.

"It was a war! At that time, they thought I was a very loose girl to date a black boy. But I knew he is very honest and has a good heart to help other people."

They now have three children and Uganda has been their home since 1996.

Image source, WANG LI HONG SOOMA

Read Catherine Byaruhanga's full report here.

Authorities in Zambia have impounded more than 400 cars and buses for breaking a law that restricts the movement of vehicles at night.

The country in 2016 passed a law that restricts the movement of public service vehicles (PSVs) and cars in transit between 21:00 and 05:00 in a bid to curb road traffic accidents.

However, the law was in 2017 amended to allow PSVs to operate day and night after acquiring a permit as long as the operator adhered to the fleet road safety management guidelines.

But Road Transport and Safety Agency spokesman Frederick Mubanga said the law was still not being respected.

He said the vehicles were impounded after the agency carried out a special operation aimed at enforcing compliance with the law.

"The agency is concerned that only three operators and companies have applied and managed to acquire a permit to be allowed to move at night and most operators opt to defy provisions of the law in this regard with impunity," he said.

He warned that drivers who continued flouting the law risked being fined or imprisoned for up to three months.

Landlocked Zambia relies on heavy duty trucks to transport goods to neighboring countries with sea ports.

South Africa's coal power stations can't meet demand and are polluting the air local communities breathe.

In South Africa, rolling blackouts known as "load-shedding" have been leaving large swathes of the population in the dark.

But as the state utility Eskom tries to keep the electricity switched on, there have been growing concerns over the health cost of its coal-fired power stations, most of which are based in one province.

The BBC's Nomsa Maseko has been to that province – Mpumalanga – to find out more and meet some of those affected.

Video journalist: Christian Parkinson

The son of the former Angolan president has been released from prison, where he was being held on charges of embezzlement.

José Filomeno dos Santos had been detained for seven months.

He was accused of attempting to steal $1.5bn (£1.1bn) when he was head of Angola's sovereign wealth fund.

He was appointed to that role in 2013 by his father, who was president at the time. But he was sacked last year by current President João Lourenço who came to power in 2017.

On Friday, prosecutors announced they had recovered all the financial and other assets of the Angolan sovereign wealth fund.

Mr dos Santos' lawyer said the legality of his client's detention had expired weeks ago.

South African TV host Janez Vermeiren says white people should stop using the phrase "back in the good old days" saying it insults those who suffered under apartheid.

"It's pretty simple. No matter how bad things are in the country at the moment, it's better than Apartheid. Clearly a lot of white people don't understand this. Probably the same ones that don't understand privilege," he tweeted, external.

His comments on Twitter have sparked a debate over the past few days.

Vermeiren, who is white, has had his views dismissed by some white South Africans.

"Yawn," tweeted one person:

Another mocked the TV star by suggesting he'd lost his brain:

But other people have praised Vermeiren. One called him "a breath of fresh air":

Another said that most of Vermeiren's critics "were never on the receiving end" of racial injustice, adding that "the naked truth hurts":

Read more:

• South Africa's toxic race relations
• 'Not black enough, not white enough'
• More about South Africa

Nigeria is Africa's largest producer of oil and natural gas yet about half of the country’s population has no access to electricity, and those that do face daily power cuts that can last for hours on end.

Meet the men and women on the front line of Nigeria’s energy crisis as they battle public anger and a decaying infrastructure in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil hub:

More from Africa Eye:

• Torture exposed at Somali rehab clinic
• La Lucha: Bye Bye Mr President
• Anatomy of a killing: Finding the soldiers who killed this woman
• Burning Cameroon: Images you're not meant to see

Image source, Getty Images

Plans to classify female athletes by their testosterone levels "contravene international human rights" says the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Olympic 800m champion Semenya, 28, is challenging the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) over its bid to restrict levels of testosterone in female runners.

The UN called the plans "unnecessary, humiliating and harmful".

The IAAF said the motion given to the UN contained "inaccurate statements".

Under the IAAF rules, female athletes with naturally high testosterone levels would have to race against men or change events unless they took medication to reduce those levels.

The regulations will apply to women in track events from 400m up to one mile ,and require that athletes have to keep their testosterone levels below a prescribed amount "for at least six months prior to competing".

Read the full story on BBC Sport.

BBC World Service

Image source, Avalon/Getty Images

A US environmental campaign group has accused Chinese logging companies of devastating key forests in the Congo Basin, and so damaging the climate, protected tree species and the habitat of endangered animals.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) says its report, external is the result of four years of research, much of it undercover.

It accused the Chinese companies of paying huge bribes to win logging rights in Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon, of evading taxes and of violating export quotas.

One of the main companies concerned, SICOFOR, has denied the allegations.

The EIA says the Congo Basin forests are critical to the planet because they are thought to generate more than three-quarters of the region's rainfall - and about 75 million people live in or depend on the forests.

Ferdinand Omondi
BBC Africa, Turkana

In a remote village in Kenya's north-western Turkana region, an old man, Loriaban Ngikolomo, leans on his stick, staring forlornly at a dried-up shrub on a mound of sand.

Beneath the shrubs his son is buried. After a few minutes, he trudges back to the shade of a near-barren cactus tree to rejoin his family.

Mr Ngikolomo tells me his son starved to death, though the government insists that no-one has died because of the drought which has hit northern Kenya.

He then painfully adds that he doesn’t mind starving because he has lived long enough, but he is desperate for his other children - who number at least 10 - to survive.

"I am worried about the children because of hunger. I can’t give them anything other than wild fruit, which is also getting depleted. If I don’t get any assistance, we are doomed," Mr Ngikolomo says.

His rib cage is visible. Days without food have made the days longer and hotter.

It hasn’t rained for months in many parts of Kenya. The situation is particularly bad in this hot, remote and arid area of the country.

The drought has now put more than a million Kenyans at risk. The most vulnerable are the children and the elderly, but the Kenyan government has insisted the country has sufficient food and it will reach everyone in need.

Image source, Ethiopian Airlines

"Let me be clear: Ethiopian Airlines believes in Boeing," these are the words of its CEO Tewolde Gebremariam, despite the fact that one of its aircraft crashed on 10 March near the town of Bishoftu, killing all 157 people on board.

"We will work with investigators in Ethiopia, in the US and elsewhere to figure out what went wrong with Flight 302.

"We resolve to work with Boeing and others to use this tragedy to make the skies safer for the world," Mr Tewolde added, in a statement.

Rejecting US media reports that the pilot of the plane which crashed had not been trained to fly the Boeing 737 Max 8, he said: "We are the only airline in Africa among the very few in the world with the B-737 Max full flight simulator.

"Contrary to some media reports, our pilots who fly the new model were trained on all appropriate simulators."

You may also be interested in:

• More about the Ethiopia Airlines crash
• Who were the victims?
• Ethiopia country profile

Twitter users are showing their support for a group of Burundian schoolgirls facing jail for scribbling on a photo of the president in their textbooks by doing the same thing.

With the hashtag #FreeOurGirls, people are sharing photos of President Pierre Nkurunziza with wigs, moustaches and cowboy hats added.

Campaign group Human Rights Watch, external says the three schoolgirls were arrested a fortnight ago and are awaiting trial after being charged last week with insulting the head of state. They risk being jailed for five years.

The agency also said the authorities had initially arrested seven schoolchildren, but four of them, including a 13-year-old, were freed immediately.

The remaining three, all under the age of 18, have been detained in prison.

Last week, HRW director for Central Africa Lewis Mudge said the father of one of the girls said on Saturday they were "too scared to eat".

Mr Mudge added: "With so many real crimes being committed in Burundi, it’s tragic that children are the ones being prosecuted for harmless scribbles.

"Authorities should focus on holding perpetrators of serious rights violations to account instead of jailing schoolchildren for doodles."

Image source, Varkey Foundation/PA

The Kenyan science teacher who has won a $1m prize (£760,000) after being voted the world's best teacher has urged his colleagues to teach with passion - and not to think about money.

In a BBC Newsday interview, Peter Tabichi, who won the 2019 Global Teacher Prize, described teaching as a "noble" profession.

"Through teachers, you'll do away with challenges like poverty," he said.

"I'll advise them [teachers] to do their work with passion, and not to really think about money. They should think about how it's going to benefit young children," the science teacher said.

He gives away 80% of his pay to support pupils at the Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in Pwani Village in Nakuru county in western Kenya.

Read more about him here.

Image source, Getty Images

Tanzanians are celebrating the fact that their national football team have qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations finals for the first time in 39 years.

President John Magufuli has invited the Taifa Stars to his official residence to congratulate them on their achievement.

Tanzania beat Uganda 3-0 in Dar es Salaam on Sunday, securing the victory they needed to qualify.

Uganda had already qualified. This brings to four - Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Burundi - the number of East African teams that will play at the finals in Egypt.

Read the full story here

One of London's newest, smallest, and certainly quirkiest museums is a beautiful fretwork (ornate woodwork) decorated house which came about, by chance, because a man wanted to cover up a damp patch.

He was the Kenyan poet Khadambi Asalache - the son of an African chief working in London as a civil servant - and over 20 years he turned his nondescript terraced house into a work of art.

On his death he left the house to the National Trust - more usually associated with stately homes. BBC Newsday had a look around the house.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

Image source, Getty Images

Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has replaced the army chief of staff and the head of the country's land forces - a day after 134 Fulani villagers were killed by a rival ethnic group in the Mopti Region of the country.

The government says it is banning a militia which it says was behind Saturday's attack - the latest in a series of deadly killings.

The first video footage from Ogossagou village shows the smouldering remains of people's homes - the mud walled huts collapsed after they were torched by the attackers.

There are burnt out vehicles and on one side of the village the body of a Fulani child no more than two years old.

A local mayor says pregnant women were cut open with machetes and people were thrown down wells.

The Malian government says it is banning the Dan Na Ambassagou militia or self-defence group, which it says carried out the attack.

But jihadists are also active in central Mali and Fulanis have carried out attacks too.

It's a complex conflict which the Malian army has failed to deal with.

Anne Soy
BBC Africa, Nairobi

Image source, Getty Images

The number of people known to have contracted Ebola in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has exceeded 1,000, making the current outbreak the second largest ever recorded, aid workers say.

More than 629 people have died since last August. New cases have increased sharply over the past week, with 58 new cases reported - the highest number in a week in 2019.

A leading aid group, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), said DR Congo had reached a "tragic milestone".

"We are already almost seven months into this outbreak and at this stage we should be seeing the case rate declining, not on the rise," it said.

"With an optimistic outlook this outbreak is predicted to last another six months - but realistically we could be looking towards another year of fighting this disease," the IRC added.

Insecurity and mistrust have hampered the work of health workers.

Several treatment facilities have been attacked and infectious patients have been let out.

There are concerns that some people are staying away from treatment centres, making it difficult to prevent further spread of the disease.

More on this story:

• Why Ebola keeps coming back
• Watch: Battling Ebola in DR Congo