Cyuzuzo Samba
BBC Great Lakes, Nairobi

Image source, Reuters

Prominent Rwandan opposition figure Victoire Ingabire has accused the government of overshadowing Independence Day celebrations in favour of Liberation Day, marking when the governing Rwandan Patriotic Front came to power after the genocide ended.

Rwanda marked its 57th independence day on Monday but without elaborate celebrations.

The government of Rwanda has previously said that the two days - 1 July and 4 July - were combined because they are both meaningful and close.

Mrs Ingabire, who leads the FDU-Inkungi party, said in a statement that President Paul Kagame's government was trying "to change the history as Independence Day is almost forgotten".

Mrs Ingabire called on Rwandans to take lessons from the fight for independence against Belgium to campaign for their rights for their freedom of expression and opposition, which she accused the government of denying to citizens.

“Powers come and go, but the history remains, no one should try to destroy the history," Mrs Ingabire said.

Mrs Ingabire was released from prison on a presidential pardon last year after having served five years in jail on charges of threatening state security and "belittling" the 1994 genocide.

Image source, Caine Prize

Lesley Nneka Arimah is one of five authors nominated for this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing, external - the winner will be announced next Monday.

Born in the UK, Arimah grew up in Nigeria and has been nominated for her story Skinned, which follows the fortunes of Ejem, who comes from a culture where girls are uncovered at a certain age and go naked until they are claimed by a husband.

The 36-year-old told the Literary Hub, external that the idea came from a conversation about the difference between married and single women in Nigeria: “A newly wed friend marvelled at how her family - usually difficult - became easy going after her wedding. Marriage gave unconventional women cover to be themselves, we observed.”

This is an extract from her short story:

You can click here, external to read the whole story, or listen to it here, external.

This week all five of the shortlisted authors are being featured on BBC Africa Live - and BBC Focus on Africa radio will have full coverage of the Caine Prize ceremony and winner, who will win £10,000 ($12,600).

A South African supermarket has launched a trial selling vegetables and fruits without packaging to reduce the use of plastics, Business Insider South Africa reports, external.

Pick n Pay says 13 of its stores now have "nude zones" which will allow customers to use their own containers.

The supermarket says it wants to increase the sale of loose products in its aisles, which now accounts for only 10% of all fruit and vegetables sold in its stores.

“There is scope to grow our ‘nude’ wall offering, but it needs to be sustainable and without unintended consequences. Reducing plastic waste has obvious benefits, but we need to be careful not to increase food waste levels during the process,” Paula Disberry, a retail executive at Pick n Pay,said.

The retail store is also using laser technology to imprint names and prices on the vegetables to reduce printing plastic labels.

An 18-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli Solomon Tekah, who was shot and killed near the Israeli city of Haifa by an off-duty police officer on Sunday, is expected to be buried today, the Jerusalem Post reports, external.

On Monday night, hundreds of Ethiopian-Israelis came out in protest over the death of Mr Solomon.

Three policemen were injured after demonstrators threw stones at the officers and lit fireworks.

The police responded with stun grenades and several demonstrators were injured.

The officer accused of killing Mr Solomon has been detained on suspicion of manslaughter, Ha'aretz reports, external.

It quotes the police as saying that the officer, who was not on duty, was trying to separate two young people who were having a row.

But Ha'aretz has also spoken to an eyewitness who said that the officer had threatened the youths with his weapon.

An Israeli news channel has shared footage of one of the demonstrations:

At least 40 people have died and more than 60 have been injured in an oil tanker explosion in Benue state, central Nigeria, authorities have told BBC Pidgin.

Eyewitnesses said that on Monday afternoon an oil tanker overturned while trying to avoid a pothole on a highway leading to the state capital, Makurdi. Locals then gathered to collect fuel leaking from the truck despite warnings from police officers present at the scene.

In addition, the driver of an 18-seater passenger bus insisted on going through the scene of the accident, witnesses said.

Something then ignited the fuel and there was an explosion killing all the passengers on board and some of those gathering fuel, locals have told BBC Pidgin's Dooshima Abu. Nearby houses and residents were also affected.

Two men from the fire service were reportedly seriously injured while attempting to put out the inferno, and are in hospital.

Accidents involving oil tankers are common on Nigeria’s roads. Last August, a fuel tanker crashed and caught fire in the city of Port Harcourt, southern Nigeria.

In June 2018, at least nine people were killed in a major accident involving a tanker in the financial capital, Lagos.

Recent large drug hauls in West Africa indicate the region is becoming increasingly important as a transit point for drugs from South America to the rest of the continent and into Europe.

Customs authorities in Senegal said they seized nearly 800kg of cocaine on a ship arriving in the capital in the last few days.

Kwesi Aning is an expert in the West African drugs trade at the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, Ghana.

He spoke to the BBC's Newsday programme about the issue:

A video filmed from the inside of a car believed to be clocking 322km/h (200mph) on a highway in South Africa has sparked criticism and calls for the unknown driver to be tracked and arrested.

It's unclear when the video was recorded but local media report that the car was cruising through the R21 highway in the main city of Johannesburg.

A passenger in the car can be heard egging on the driver to compete with a speeding motorbike.

"Let [the biker] go and then you fetch him," the voice says.

Meanwhile, the local police department condemned the act saying it could have easily led to a fatal accident.

"We can't condone such behaviour. There is going to be an horrific accident," police spokesperson Wilfred Kgasago said, TimesLive reports., external

"We don't tolerate this. Even 200km/h is a bit hectic. How do you do 300km/h?" he added.

People in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, are now able to access the internet through a data connection on their mobile phones, ending a blackout that began shortly after the alleged attempted coup nine days ago.

The wi-fi connection was restored at the end of last week.

But it appears that the data connection is still off in the rest of the country, according to people that the BBC has spoken to outside of Addis Ababa.

This is the second blackout in less than a month in Ethiopia. Earlier in June, internet access was blocked for more than a week during the nationwide school exam period, but there was no official comment as to what was behind that outage.

Image source, Getty

A court in Uganda has ordered the government to pay $6,700 (£5,300) as compensation to Joyce Bikyahaga Namata, the mother of a man who was killed in police custody in 2007.

Ronald Bikyahaga died as a result of the severe beating and torture he received at Nabbingo Police Post after he was picked up at a film hall and dragged into the police cells, where he was found dead the following morning, the court judgement says.

Justice Musa Ssekaana said that the police force “was vicariously liable" adding that "the police officers deliberately and illegally tortured the deceased which is unconstitutional”.

It’s rare for a court to order the authorities to pay compensation, reports the BBC's Catherine Byaruhanga in Kampala.

But there is a question mark over whether the government will pay up,

Compliance is a serious shortcoming on the government's side, our reporter says.

An auditor general’s report for the year ending June 2018, indicates that government owes $176m in court awards.

Image source, Reuters

A Rwandan man has been sentenced to eight years in prison in the US for immigration fraud and perjury after hiding the fact that he was involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Jean Leonard Teganya, 47, "was convicted and sentenced for the most serious form of immigration fraud: lying about his status as a war criminal to win asylum in the United States,” said US Attorney Andrew E Lelling, in a statement issued by the department of justice, external.

In just 100 days in 1994, about 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists. They were targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin.

Teganya was a medical student in Rwanda at the time of the genocide and was accused of leading teams of soldiers around a hospital and identifying Tutsi patients, the US statement says.

"Once discovered, the Tutsis were taken and killed behind the maternity ward," it adds.

Teganya fled Rwanda in 1994 and ended up in Canada where he applied for asylum. But the authorities turned down his claim because of his alleged involvement in the genocide.

He then avoided deportation and went to the US where he was detained. In his application for asylum in the US he did not disclose his activities during the genocide, the US government says.

Teganya is expected to appeal against the judgement, Reuters news agency reports. His lawyer argued that as a Hutu, he feared being accused of involvement in the genocide and therefore fled.

Once his sentence is complete, Teganya is likely to be deported from the US.

Read more:

• Rwanda genocide: 100 days of slaughter

At least 23 people have died in violence in central Mali, a local official and security sources are quoted as saying.

Three villages were attacked by armed men on Sunday, Cheick Harouna Sankare the mayor of a nearby town told journalists.

"The situation is serious, the army needs to act to reassure the population," AFP news agency quotes him as saying.

The Reuters news agency describes the villages that were attacked as part of the Fulani community.

In recent months, central Mali has seen several bouts of violence which appear to be tit-for-tat attacks between Fulani and Dogon communities.

In June, 35 people died in an attack on a Dogon village.

In reaction to previous killings, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has said the government will boost security.

The authorities in Nigeria's commercial hub, Lagos, say 15 corpses have so far been recovered from the scene of a boat accident that happened on Saturday.

The passenger boat with 21 people on board had been travelling from Ajah on Lagos Island to Ikorodu on the mainland, when it capsized.

Lagos state's emergency agency said it suspects that the vessel capsized due to overloading adding that the boat "was overturned by the heavy current".

Three survivors were taken to hospital while search is still on for three others.

The authorities have not said if the captain of the boat is one of those confirmed dead or if the company that operated the vessel will face prosecution.

Image source, Getty Images

Sadio Mane scored twice as Senegal eased to a 3-0 Group C victory over Kenya and booked their place in the last 16 of the Africa Cup of Nations.

Kenya could still qualify as one of the best four third-placed teams, depending on the results in the final games in Group E and F.

Algeria's Napoli midfielder Adam Ounas scored twice and picked up an assist on his first appearance at Afcon as his side maintained their 100% record with a 3-0 victory over Tanzania.

Arsenal transfer target Wilfried Zaha scored as Ivory Coast moved into the last 16 with a thumping 4-1 win over Namibia.

And South Africa will have to wait to discover whether they have qualified for the last 16 after Morocco scored a late goal to win the game 1-0.

Tuesday sees the final set of group matches with all the teams in Group E and F still having a chance to go through to the last 16:

• Angola v Mali
• Mauritania v Tunisia
• Benin v Cameroon
• Guinea-Bissau v Ghana

Image source, Getty Images

Genetically modified mosquitoes have been released in Burkina Faso as part of an anti-malaria campaign.

While some critics have raised concerns, the scientists involved said the release, which was the first of its kind in Africa, represented a very important milestone.

Burkina Faso's Research Institute of Health Sciences, a government sponsored institution, released male genetically modified mosquitoes in the south-western town of Bana.

It is part of a project funded by Target Malaria, external, a research consortium led by Imperial College in London.

While the release was approved by the country's biosafety agency, critics have raised concerns about the risks involved and questioned the validity of the project saying it is not expected to deliver any benefits for malaria control.

Target Malaria says the release itself is not intended to reduce the incidence of malaria but says it will enable them to collect important data to inform their research.

The Research Institute says the mosquito release conforms to all ethical and regulatory requirements and that it was approved by the community during consultations.

Malaria killed more than 4,000 people in Burkina Faso last year and affected more than 12,000.

In May, a separate study in Burkina Faso showed that a fungus - genetically enhanced to produce spider toxin - could rapidly kill huge numbers of the mosquitoes that spread malaria.

Read more:

• Would it be wrong to eradicate mosquitoes?
• Working the night shift on Malaria's frontline in Sierra Leone
• Africa pilots world's first malaria vaccine in major trial

BBC World Service

Amnesty International has called on the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to abandon reported plans to send in troops to forcibly remove an estimated 10,000 subsistence miners in the southern Katanga region.

The human rights group said the miners were merely trying to eke out a living in the Tenke Fungurume copper and cobalt mines and that using the army against them was completely irresponsible.

Amnesty International's Sarah Jackson alleged that the Congolese army had a long history of excessive use of force and that the soldiers should be withdrawn to avert unlawful killings.

There's been no reaction from the DR Congo government.

Image source, Washington Post

Read more:

• The precious metal sparking a new gold rush

• DR Congo: Cursed by its natural wealth

Our proverb of the day:

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

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

BBC Africa Live
Damian Zane, Nduka Orjinmo & Naima Mohamud

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 or check BBCAfrica.com.

A reminder of our wise words:

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

And we leave you with this picture of a child playing with a cow in Tanzania - a photo by Hans Photography.

Tesfalem Araia
BBC Tigrinya

A rare and endangered species of gazelle has been rediscovered in Eritrea, wildlife authorities in the Horn of Africa country say.

The "Eritrean gazelle" (Eudorcas tilonura) was last seen about 100 years ago when Eritrea was an Italian colony. It is one of two “drought resistant” species found in the country.

The gazelle has now reappeared in the south-western Gash Barka region, according to the head of conservation in the Forestry and Wild Life Authority, Fitsum Hagos, who spoke to the national TV channel.

“They can survive for a year without water,” Mr Fitsum said.

The animal is identified by the black stripe on the side of its belly.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categorises the "Eritrean gazelle" as endangered.

Somalia has summoned the ambassador of Kenya to Somalia and handed him a protest note over a recent "offensive tweet" by Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The tweet, from 27 June, posted on Kenya's official Ministry of Foreign Affairs account, showed a photo of a senior Kenyan official holding a meeting with a minister from the self-declared republic of Somaliland. The tweet referred to Somaliland as a country:

Somaliland claimed independence from Somalia in 1991 but this has not been internationally recognised.

In a press statement released on Monday, the Somali government said it considered the tweet "an affront to Somalia's sovereignty".

In recent years, Somalia and Kenya have been arguing over a maritime row that is due to go to the International Court of Justice in September.