Image source, Reuters

All eyes are on Madagascar as they look to cause another major upset at the Africa Cup of Nations.

They have already defeated Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo, and standing in their way of a place in the semi-finals are Tunisia, who have yet to win a game at this tournament in normal time.

Tunisia drew all three group games before requiring penalties to see off Ghana in the round of 16.

Journalist Tim Healy who's in Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo, described the mood in the country as explosive.

"The people are talking about this non-stop, it’s on the cover of every newspaper," he told the BBC's Newsday programme.

President Andry Rajoelina, who was in the stadium to watch the game against DR Congo on Sunday, told the BBC that the side can "go all the way".

In Thursday's other quarter-final game, former champions Ivory Coast face an Algeria team in Suez that have won all four games, scored nine goals and are yet to concede.

A separatist leader in Cameroon, Cho Ayaba, says people in the English-speaking regions of the country are “fighting for survival” and “for existence”.

The government says the separatists are "terrorists" who are causing widespread destruction.

Thousands of people have been killed and many more displaced in a conflict that has been going on since 2016.

Mr Ayaba is leader of a group called the Ambazonia Governing Council, which wants to create a separate state - Ambazonia - for the English-speakers in the country.

Government troops have been accused of extrajudicial killings and burning villages, but recently there has been a focus on abuses committed by the many separatists groups, including kidnapping.

Speaking to the BBC’s Newsday programme, Mr Ayaba said it wasn’t a choice for separatists to take up arms. He said: “Villages are being burnt and it’s a kind of a scorched-earth policy by what I describe as a retreating army that has lost legitimacy and political control.”

Mr Ayaba said they were other organised groups not affiliated to his movement that have been “carrying acts of brutality against the civilians”, and added his group has stopped kidnapping and ransom taking.

The conflict has displaced more than half a million people, with the UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet who travelled to the region in May, warning that the situation is spiralling out of control.

Read more:

• Burning Cameroon - images you're not meant to see

Kenya's interior ministry has said it has not renewed the licenses of 27 betting companies including the country's biggest, SportPesa.

In a letter to telecoms company Safaricom, the government says that the companies have not met the "outstanding renewal requirements". But, correspondents say, it is not clear what exactly these requirements are.

SportPesa is known worldwide as a sponsor of English Premier League clubs. The company's name currently appears on Everton shirts.

Most people in Kenya who want to gamble use their mobile phones to place bets. The government has asked Safaricom to suspend the betting companies' telephone short codes.

In a response through its lawyer, Safaricom says its estimated 12 million clients should still have access to the funds they have deposited in their betting accounts. It has asked for permission to keep the short codes to allow people to withdraw the money.

In addition, it points out that SportPesa has an outstanding court case with the authorities on a previous ruling.

It has also asked the government to make a public announcement about the ruling on the licenses.

Gambling has become big business in the country in recent years as companies have taken advantage of technology that makes it easier to sell their services. Some have expressed concern that a growing number of young people are spending their money on gambling.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

The populations of elephants and rhinos in Tanzania are on the rise again following government efforts to break up criminal poaching gangs, the Tanzanian presidency said in a statement quoted by the Reuters news agency.

"As a result of the work of a special task force launched in 2016 to fight wildlife poaching, elephant populations have increased from 43,330 in 2014 to over 60,000 presently," the presidency said.

The rhino population has risen from 14 four years ago to 167, Reuters adds.

February’s sentencing in Tanzania of Yang Fenglan, a Chinese woman nicknamed the "Ivory Queen", to 15 years in jail for smuggling hundreds of elephant tusks, was considered a major breakthrough.

She was accused of operating one of Africa's biggest ivory-smuggling rings, responsible for smuggling $2.5m (£1.9m) worth of tusks from some 400 elephants.

Two Tanzanian men were also found guilty of involvement in the ring.

The illicit trade is fuelled by demand from China and east Asia, where ivory is used to make jewellery and ornaments.

Read more:

• The war on elephants
• Botswana elephant poaching 'no hoax'

Eswatini has banned a competition of “witchcraft and magic spells”, AFP news agency reports quoting a government statement.

“Anyone who will persist with any activity related to witchcraft will face the full might of the law,” government spokesman Percy Simelane is quoted as saying.

People in the country, formerly known as Swaziland, could not be “exposed to illegal and weird practices,” he added.

The competition, that was supposed to see witchdoctors pit their skills against each other, was planned for the weekend, AFP says.

The Times of Swaziland quotes an elderly traditional healer, named as Africa Gama, as saying that the competition was organised by a man from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mr Gama, who claimed he was in charge of traditional healing in the country, said that he had taken part in a similar competition under King Sobhuza II, who died in 1982, the newspaper reports.

The king wanted to put an end to false claims by some healers, but it was right to ban this competition as it was not organised through the right channels, Mr Gama added.

William Troost-Ekong scored a late goal as Nigeria won 2-1 against South Africa to qualify for the semi-final of the Africa Cup of Nations.

Samuel Chukwueze had bundled in the opener in the first half, but Bongani Zungu equalised with a header initially ruled out for offside. However, VAR replays showed a free-kick hit a Nigerian player on the way to him.

Football fans of both countries had thrown barbs at each other before the game, but it was only one side that celebrated into the night at the end.

Inside the stadium, fans of the host nation made it clear they weren't watching as neutrals after they were knocked out in the previous round by the South Africans:

And there was a congratulatory message from Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari who hailed the "indomitable Nigerian spirit":

In South Africa, many were disappointed. One famous musician described the game "as bigger than football" lamenting that South African loses to "Naija at everything":

A South African government minister tried to look on the bright side:

Nigeria face Ivory Coast or Algeria in Sunday's second semi-final.

Senegal, who beat Benin 1-0 earlier on Wednesday, will play either Madagascar or Tunisia in the other semi-final.

Tomi Oladipo
BBC Africa security correspondent

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says the current fight against terror in West Africa’s Sahel region is insufficient.

He was speaking at a UN summit on counter-terrorism, where he urged donors to do more to support military and developmental efforts to stop violent extremism.

Recently the Sahel has suffered an increase in jihadist and ethnic violence, and sometimes a combination of both.

The G5 Sahel, a multinational counter-terrorism force in the region, has been largely underfunded and failed to counter the threat from groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.

Mr Guterres thinks there needs to be a change in attitude towards the force and its job, and he wants the international community to care more.

“I think we need on one hand to make the mandate stronger, we need to make the funding more predictable but I think probably the G5 is no longer enough," he told the BBC.

"I think we need to look into a broader regional context. We need to engage with the countries of West Africa with stronger support from the international community,“ he said.

This week the European Union pledged an additional $150m (£120m) to the G5 Sahel force, but many other donors have failed to deliver promised funds. And two years after it was formed, the force has barely got off the ground.

Read more:

• Africa blighted by multiple Jihadist threats
• What is the Sahel G-5 force?

Image source, Getty Images

BBC World Service

Image source, EPA

The Algerian parliament has elected an Islamist opposition politician, Slimane Chenine, to be its new speaker.

The governing FLN party, which holds a strong parliamentary majority, said it had put the national interest above its own by supporting Mr Chenine's candidacy.

His predecessor, Mouad Bouchareb, who was a staunch supporter of former long-time President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, resigned last week after months of protests calling for him to step down.

Thursday's African proverb:

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

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 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 from the Soukouk desert in Nouakchott, Mauritania:

Tanzania's Foreign Minister Palamagamba Kabudi has appeared to say that a journalist who went missing in 2017 may have died.

BBC Focus on Africa's Peter Okwoche asked Mr Kabudi if the state had done enough to find out what happened to the investigative journalist Azory Gwanda.

Part of Mr Kabudi's reply was:

"The state is dealing with all those who have unfortunately died and disappeared in Rufiji... it was very painful for someone who was doing his job to pass on".

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which has been campaigning for the government to launch a credible investigation into his case, external, says Mr Gwanda was investigating cases of mysterious killings in his community in the months before his disappearance.

Mr Gwanda's wife, Anna Pinoni, was one of the last people to see him before he vanished. She says the last time she saw him was when he left their farm in a white Land Cruiser with four men she did not recognise, the CPJ adds.

CPJ says multiple people believe that those men are security personnel.

Image source, Mwananchi Publications Limited/CPJ

Image source, Getty Images

European police have arrested six suspected members of a Finnish-led gang who trafficked Nigerian women for sex, AFP news agency quoted officials as saying.

The group worked in at least 15 countries, from Marbella in Spain, where the alleged ringleader was arrested, to Finland and Sweden, where a lot of the women worked as prostitutes, the EU legal agency Eurojust is quoted by AFP as saying.

Police have seized almost three million euros ($3.4m; £2,.7m) in assets in four countries, now frozen the suspects' bank accounts in 12 different countries, as well as seizing luxury cars, jewellery and about €30,000 in cash, the EU's police agency Europol is quoted as saying.

AFP adds that the group is said to have made some €40m in criminal profits since 2010.

Uganda says there have been no further cases of Ebola in the country since two people died in June, AFP news agency quotes the Congolese authorities as saying.

A five-year-old boy and his grandmother died of Ebola in Uganda on 12 and 13 June.

They were the first cases reported there since the virus spread over the border from Democratic Republic of Congo, where nearly 1,400 people have died.

Twenty-seven people were said to have been in contact with the two who died. They were restricted to their homes and were monitored for 21 days without contracting the disease, reports AFP.

The grandmother had lived in DR Congo, where her husband recently died of Ebola. Her daughter had travelled from Uganda, where she lives with her Ugandan husband, to the Congolese town of Beni with her children to help care for him.

After the grandfather died they all travelled to Uganda's Kasese district, where the five-year-old son and his grandmother then subsequently became sick and later died.

A South African Uber driver who loves belting out arias at full volume for his passengers has found fame and a career in opera - thanks to a viral video of a performance in his cab.

Taxi driver Menzi Mngoma mentioned to passenger Kim Davies that he was a self-taught opera singer and she asked him to sing for her.

As soon as Mngoma started to sing for her she got "goose bumps all over", she says. "I was completely bowled over. I couldn't believe that a man with such talent was unable to use it, she said.

She filmed him singing Verdi's La donna è mobile and posted it on Facebook:

The clip went viral and he has been inundated with offers.

He has auditioned for Cape Town Opera, is currently recording a single and is also scheduled to sing in Los Angeles in December.

Read more on the BBC News website.

Peter Jegwa Kumwenda
Lilongwe, Malawi

Protestors in Malawi have threatened to march naked if people don’t stop criticising a top female official.

The group, who call themselves the Forum for Concerned Women in Malawi, say that the boss of the country’s electoral commission, Jane Ansah, has been criticised because she is a woman.

The pro-government group marched through the southern city of Blantyre wearing T-shirts saying “I stand with Dr Jane Ansah”. They promised that next time they will protest again, only without clothes, if complaints about her continue.

Over the past few weeks demonstrators across Malawi have shown their anger at the manner in which the Malawi elections, which saw President Peter Mutharika re-elected as president, were handled.

Their key demand has been the resignation of Ms Ansah.

Ibrahim Aydid
BBC Monitoring

Somalia has executed three members of the Islamist militant group al-Shabab who were accused of attacking a hotel in the capital Mogadishu, reports state media.

The execution was carried out by the army's firing squad.

They were convicted by the military court on 30 May 2018.

At least 18 people were killed and 48 others injured when al-Shabab militants stormed Hotel Nasahablod 28 October 2017.

Image source, Getty Images

Tanzanian President John Magufuli has told women to "set your ovaries free" and have more children to help the country's economy grow, reports Reuters news agency.

"When you have a big population you build the economy. That's why China's economy is so huge. I know that those who like to block ovaries will complain about my remarks. Set your ovaries free, let them block theirs," he is quoted by Reuters as saying at a gathering in his home town of Chato on Tuesday.

This isn't the first time he has urged women to have more children. The last time was in September.

Last year Mr Magufuli said curbing the birth rate was "for those too lazy to take care of their children" Reuters adds.

Critics say that this stance is bad economics.

"High population growth in Tanzania means increased levels of poverty and income inequality," a rights activist based in Dar es Salaam, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters.

When Tabisha Esperance fled war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, all she could think about was safety for her and her family.

After settling the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, she started thinking about how to create a career.

She discovered she had a flair for design, and now proudly calls herself the "best fashion designer in Kakuma".

Watch:

The next album to feature and be produced by Beyonce, the soundtrack to Disney's new version of the Lion King, will be "steeped in the sounds of Africa", according to the film company.

The first single - Beyonce's Spirit - was released just a few hours ago and the first words you hear are in Swahili.

"Uishi kwa mda mrefu mfalme," a voice chants twice, with a deeper voice responding "uishi kwa".

The phrase means: "Long live the king."

In English Beyonce sings:

Rise up to the light in the sky, yeah

Watch the light lift your heart up

Burn your flame through the night

The Lion King follows the story of a young lion and his travails as he tries to become the king.

Disney says the full album, The Lion King: The Gift, will be released in nine days coinciding with the global release of the film.

It's set to feature the work of African producers according to Beyonce, who is quoted in a statement, external.

"It was important that the music was not only performed by the most interesting and talented artists but also produced by the best African producers. Authenticity and heart were important to me...

"It is a mixture of genres and collaboration that isn’t one sound. It is influenced by everything from R&B, hip-hop and Afro Beat.”