BBC Africa Live
Damian Zane, Nduka Orjinmo and 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.

Here's a reminder of our African proverb of the day:

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

And we leave you with one of our favourite pictures from this week - football fans celebrating Algeria's Africa Cup of Nations win:

Image source, Getty Images

Shingai Nyoka
BBC Africa, Harare

Zimbabwe’s tourism minister Prisca Mupfumira has been charged with abuse of office in an apparent new crackdown on corruption.

She is the first serving minister in President Mnangagwa’s government to be arrested.

The charges relate to her previous role as minister of labour and social welfare responsible for a state pension fund.

Mrs Mupfumira denies the charges.

The minister stood as seven charges were read out against her. They include improper use of the state pension scheme to buy a luxury vehicle and diverting money to fund her constituency activities.

Far more serious is the charge that she ordered tens of millions of dollars to be directed to an ailing bank, some of which still remains unaccounted for.

For years there have been accusations that officials enriched themselves through the $1bn (£80m) social security scheme while giving very little to pensioners.

Jose Tembe
BBC Africa, Maputo

A total of 9kg (19lb) of heroin disguised as crackers and sweets has been seized at the main international airport in Mozambique's capital, Maputo, local media reports.

A Canadian was allegedly arrested with 4.4kg of the heroin and less than 24 hours later a US citizen was arrested with 4.6kg of the drug, the reports say.

Both were due to fly to Italy, according to the reports.

Police say they will step up investigations to uncover the drug trafficking networks operating in Mozambique, which is regarded as a drug corridor to various countries in Africa, Europe and Asia.

The United Nations is in the process of setting up an office to collaborate with the government in the fight against drug trafficking and distribution.

Saudi Arabia will not grant visas to pilgrims from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

The ministry said the decision was reached following the decision of the World Health to declare the Ebola outbreak in DR Congo a public health emergency of international concern.

"The granting of arrivals visas for people entering from DR Congo has been stopped, to conserve the well being of pilgrims," the ministry said.

Saudi Arabia had initially said that up to 410 people from the central African state could undertake the annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca later this month, a Muslim leader in DR Congo, Imam Djuma Twaha, told the BBC.

"There are people who have been preparing for years, sometimes 10 to put together the $4,250 (£3,400) and make this divine trip to Mecca," he said.

The WHO declared Ebola a public health emergency of international concern on 17 July but urged countries not to restrict trade or travel.

Former Sierra Leone Football Association official Abu Bakarr Kabba has become the latest person to be sanctioned by Fifa.

He has been banned for five years and fined $50,000 (£40,000) for violating Fifa's Code of Ethics.

Football's world governing body found him, external "guilty of having accepted and received bribes in relation to the manipulation of international matches."

Read more: Fifa bans former Sierra Leone FA official for five years

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

There are fears in Kenya that the country's donkey population could be wiped out if nothing is done to stop the slaughter rate, because of China's insatiable demand for the gelatine produced from boiling the animals' skins.

Estimates suggest as many as 1,000 donkeys a day are being slaughtered, and that the population could be wiped out in ten years.

Listen to the report here: Could Kenya's donkey population be wiped out?

Image source, getty

China's state-owned oil firm National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) is planning to participate in the building of a Ugandan oil pipeline known as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, news agency Reuters reports.

The $3,5bn (£2,8bn) pipeline will pass through Tanzania to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga.

Ugandan oil fields are jointly owned by China's National Offshore Oil Corporation, France's Total and the UK's Tullow, Reuters says.

Crude oil reserves were discovered in the country more than a decade ago but lack of infrastructure has made commercial production difficult.

Uganda's government is now aiming to start commercial crude production in 2022, officials say, Reuters reports.

Eagan Salla
BBC Swahili, Mtwara, Tanzania

Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli is expected to lay the foundation stone for the construction of Stiegler’s Gorge hydroelectric power project.

The 2,115 megawatts hydroelectric dam is expected to produce 5,920GWh of power annually. This is more than twice the country’s current capacity and consumption.

The dam will cost $3bn (£2.4bn) to build.

However, it is located in the middle of Selous Game Reserve - the main elephant sanctuary in the country and a World Heritage Site. This has raised concern and criticism among environmental activists who fear it will destroy wildlife habitat.

The idea of the dam was first conceived by the Tanzania's founding President Julius Nyerere, but it had to be abandoned due to financial and environmental concerns.

However, President Magufuli's government has been keen on industrial advancements, and the project has been viewed as a way of alleviating constant power outages which are hampering the manufacturing sector.

The massive project is part of Tanzania's power master plan, which envisions Stiegler’s Gorge helping interconnect the grids of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia.

The dam will be fourth largest in Africa and ninth in the world.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, AFP

Islamic State’s West Africa Branch (ISWA) says it is responsible for the kidnap of six aid workers in northeast Nigeria.

Aid agency, Action Against Hunger, identified a staff member and five others kidnapped last week in a video released on Wednesday.

The video showed the kidnapped aid workers asking for help from the government and the international community to secure their release.

On Thursday, the Nigerian government said it was negotiating with the captors, but declined to give further information.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in its weekly newspaper.

The group split from Boko Haram in 2016 and has carried out a number of attacks in Nigeria's north-east and the Lake Chad region in the last few months, often targeting military bases.

In October 2018 the group killed an aid worker it had kidnapped in March the same year.

The Kenyan authorities will include an intersex category, along with "male" and "female", in the section on gender in next month's census, an official from the statistics bureau has confirmed to the BBC.

It will form part of efforts to gather data on the number of intersex people in the country.

"Intersex" is an umbrella term that describes people who are born with a variety of characteristics that do not fit into traditional conceptions of female or male bodies.

The UN believes that up to 1.7% of the world's population have intersex traits.

A special task force had been set up by the government to look into the interests of intersex persons and will identify reforms required to respect and protect their rights as Kenyans.

The census is expected to take place at the end of next month.

Read more:

• The midwife who saved intersex babies

Image source, Getty Images

Nigerian Afrobeats star Burna Boy has got people talking with his new album released on Friday.

African Giant, along with previously released singles Dangote, On the Low, Gbona and Anybody, also has new songs including Gum Body, Secret, African Giant and Different - which features Damian Marley and Angelique Kidjo.

Fans of the musician, whose global status was highlighted after being featured on Beyonce's recently released album The Lion King: The Gift, took to Twitter to praise his latest work.

This fan finds something ethereal in the Collateral Damage in the funky guitar strumming:

Any song that has Burna Boy, Damian Marley and Angelique Kidjo is sure to produce fireworks, as this fan saw in Different:

Dangote, which was released earlier, is about Africa's richest man - Aliko Dangote.

It's a song about the Nigerian spirit of hustling.

In Pidgin, Burna Boy sings:

Dangote, Dangote

Dangote still dey find money o...

Who I be?

Who I be?

Wey make I no go find money o

Which translated means:

Dangote Dangote

Dangote is still looking for money

Who am I?

Who am I?

That shouldn't look for money

The authorities in Libya are still recovering the bodies of those who drowned after their boat sunk in the Mediterranean Sea, UN refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesperson Tarik Argaz told the BBC's Newsday programme.

He added that, according to some survivors, there were between 250 and 300 migrants and refugees on board the wooden fishing boat.

Mr Argaz said that the incident, believed to be the worst case of drowning in the Mediterranean this year, emphasised the UNHCR's message that alternative safe passage need to be found for refugees so that they do not have to get on a boat.

The UN agency is against returning the survivors to Libya where they are likely to end up in detention camps.

Image source, Reuters

Our colleagues in Nigeria's commercial hub have taken Google Maps' new Nigerian accent for a test drive.

On Thursday we reported that Google is now giving drivers directions in a more familiar voice..

Up to now, Nigerians have had to deal with travel advice from Google in an American accent, that struggled with pronouncing local names such as Lagos' Alfred Rewane road - which came out as Alfred Re-wain.

"When I heard it I was very happy," one man told the BBC.

Watch the film:

Hyppolite Ntigurirwa has just completed a 100-day walk across Rwanda to mark the 25th anniversary of the genocide.

At that time, when he was seven years old, he saw his father being murdered.

Each day of his walk represented a day when the killing took place.

About 800,000 people were slaughtered by ethnic Hutu extremists. They were targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin.

"I did [the walk] to remember and invite people to seek peace," Mr Ntigurirwa told the BBC's Newsday programme.

He was joined by people who had forgiven those who had killed their family members as well as some perpetrators.

His trek also helped him to heal.

"I've walked all across the country and no-one has said 'are you a Tutsi? Are you a Hutu?' They saw me as a human being and they saw me as a Rwandan."

He spoke to BBC Newsday's Shaimaa Khalil about why he started this journey:

Read more:

• Rwanda genocide: 100 days of slaughter

Lawmakers in the south-western Nigerian state of Ondo abandoned their session on Thursday as a snake dropped from the roof, local media are reporting.

Members were about to begin the business of the day when the snake dropped from a hole in the ceiling, bringing the day's work to an abrupt end as legislators and spectators in the gallery fled.

A lawmaker quoted by online newspaper Premium Times, external, said the snake did not bite anyone and was "eventually killed and burnt". Another report said the snake slithered away, unhurt.

"That chamber is no longer safe for legislative business and because of that, we decided to adjourn indefinitely. The house will be going on an indefinite recess", lawmaker Olugbenga Omole is quoted in Premium Times as saying.

Fumigation of the complex has been planned for Friday while the lawmakers are away.

• Read also: Snakes force Liberian President George Weah out of office - BBC News

Image source, QTV

A former member of an elite Gambian military outfit has said that the former president, Yahya Jammeh, ordered the killings of two US citizens in 2013, AFP news agency reports.

Concluding a week of dramatic testimony at the country’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC), Amadou Badjie said that Mr Jammeh wanted the two men, Alhaji Ceesay and Ebrima Jobe, killed and “chopped into pieces”, AFP adds.

Under questioning, Mr Badjie, who was part of a group known as the Junglers, said it was a hit squad for the former president.

Mr Jammeh wanted the two Gambian-Americans killed as he suspected they were plotting a coup.

"These two people were suffocated to death and their heads chop off. We buried these corpses in one grave," Mr Badjie said, AFP reports.

Earlier this week, the TRRC heard testimony that the former president ordered the killing of a well-known journalist and a group of migrants.

Mr Jammeh - who now lives in exile in Equatorial Guinea - always denied any involvement in the deaths of the migrants or the journalist.

Read more:

• Letter from Africa: Torture revelations transfix The Gambia

Image source, Nigerian Airforce/Twitter

A member of the Nigerian Air Force who returned a lost parcel containing 37,000 euros ($41,500; £33,300) cash has received a two-rank promotion, as part of his reward.

Bashir Umar had been on patrol duties with other colleagues at an airport in the northern state of Kano when he discovered the cash. He then called the phone number that was written on the package and returned the cash to the owner.

He was promoted from aircraftman to the rank of corporal, a promotion that should have taken him 10 years to achieve, according to the News Agency of Nigeria, external.

He was also given a letter of commendation.

At Thursday's event where he was honoured, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar said Mr Umar "displayed an uncommon act of integrity by returning the money to the owner".

Mr Umar, who was present at the event with his parents, said returning the money was part of the discipline he got from home and in service.

Earlier in the week, President Muhammadu Buhari urged Nigerians "especially the youth, to emulate such [a] worthy gesture", according to a statement from his spokesperson, external.

Ishaq Khalid
BBC Africa, Abuja

Image source, AFP

The Nigerian government says it is negotiating with captors of the six aid workers abducted last week in the north-east of the country.

The news comes after a video of the aid workers emerged.

In the video the only female among them made a passionate appeal to the authorities and the international community to facilitate their release.

The hostages, who work with aid agency Action Against Hunger, were abducted last week in Borno state when suspected Boko Haram militants ambushed their convoy and killed one of their drivers.

Government spokesperson Garba Shehu told the BBC that the authorities are hopeful the aid workers would be freed.

Mr Shehu has not given details of the negotiations but he called on the captors to show mercy.

Earlier, Action Against Hunger said the six - comprised of one staff member, plus drivers and health workers employed locally - are "apparently in a good condition of health".

The kidnapping has once again highlighted the risks humanitarian workers face as they try to deliver aid to millions of people affected by the Boko Haram conflict in the Lake Chad region.

Last year, two female staff members from the International Committee of the Red Cross were abducted and executed by militants in north-east Nigeria.

Friday's African proverb:

Image source, George Wafula/BBC

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