Ameyu Etana
BBC Afaan Oromoo

Image source, Duba Burra

Farmers in southern Ethiopia have shocked many on social media after being pictured pulling ploughs instead of their oxen.

They were photographed in Taltalle area of Borana where Tura Bobba, a resident of Bilee Dandii village, said he was one of those who volunteered to help the farmers.

"Because of the drought, we lost all of our oxen. That's why we have tried to plough with the farmers," he told the BBC.

Image source, Duba Burra

The authorities say a drought, which UN says is the worst in 40 years, has killed hundreds of thousands of cattle in the country.

Manuel Toledo
Venice, Italy

Image source, M Toledo

One is welcomed into the Arsenale, the second main exhibition space here at this year's Venice Biennale in Italy, by a huge bronze bust of a woman whose skirt looks like a clay hut.

It’s the work titled Brick House by African-American artist Simone Leigh who this year has transformed Venice’s US pavilion into what she hopes resembles a traditional African building.

Leigh’s piece is surrounded by a series of prints by the late Cuban artist Belkis Ayón whose works explore her fascination with Afro-Cuban culture, especially with the secret fraternal society Abakuá, brought into the Caribbean country by West African slaves.

Image source, M Toledo

The next room showcases the work of Zimbabwe's Portia Zvavahera, inspired by dreams and religious beliefs, and of the late Eritrean painter Ficre Ghebreyesus, who studied art in the US, where he was a refugee.

Image source, M Toledo

The exhibition at the Arsenale also includes a series of drawings by the great Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi, a fascinating huge tapestry by South Africa’s Igshaan Adams, an intriguing installation by Sandra Mujinga from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and delicate anthropomorphic vases by Kenya’s Magdalene Odundo.

All in all, a feast for African and Africa-inspired art.

More from the Venice Biennale:

• Debating the future of African art
• What's on show from Africa this year

DJ Edu
Presenter of This Is Africa on BBC World Service

Image source, Macky 2

It is not often we hear an African giant tell us it is time he stepped down to make way for new talent, let alone that he plans to dedicate himself to promoting the next generation. But that is exactly what Zambia’s Macky 2 told me when I caught up with him for This Is Africa.

Macky 2 is, by his own estimation, Zambia’s biggest artist, and, some claim, he is the country’s richest. (He tells me he doesn’t have access to others’ bank accounts, so has no idea if this is true, but confirms he is comfortable.)

His first big hit was back in 2011, and he won album of the year and song of the year at the Zambian Music Awards in 2013 and 2015 respectively.

In 2014 he caught the attention of the TV viewing public across Africa, when he made it to the last three in the ninth and final series of Big Brother Africa.

Since then he has been trying to capitalise on the fame he gained to push his music internationally, but it has been a challenge.

“Back home I can record a song and I know people on radio and TV, people know me, so it’s on radio and the next week it’s on the charts - but internationally it is much more complicated than that.”

One thing Macky 2 came to realise was that those African countries whose music has a lot of success around the continent, start from a very strong fan base at home.

“I think Nigerian music and South African music and Tanzanian music - all this music is big because the people from where the music was made really support it.”

This hasn’t always been the case in Zambia.

“Zambian music of course has grown in the last 10 to 15 years. People in neighbouring countries like Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe listen to our music quite a lot.

“But I think one of the problems we had in the past was a certain inferiority complex. We appreciated what was foreign more than our own things.

“But now I see this changing. Every show that I go to is sold out. So in terms of the love we have here, it’s great.

"Last year I did a song with Aka. It was my first big international collaboration and I felt like this is the right time - because I have the backing of my people now more than ever and I knew that if the song goes on Trace or Channel O, I already have people who are going to request for the song and support it - and that’s what you need.”

So what’s all this about quitting music?

“I’m working on my last album. I hope one day I’ll be able to come back and look at this and say why was I even thinking of quitting…

“But for now that’s where I’m at. I feel like a great artist needs to know when to leave the stage. I think it’s always great when you leave the stage while people are still clapping, and I feel as artists we should learn to pass the torch to the next person, to be ready to let others lead. I’ll be in the background.

“I’ve always had a label that promotes young, emerging artists and that’s really what I want to focus on now.

“We need more people who understand how the business works, who can help these artists move from zero to a hundred real quick, without having to go through what we went through.”

I wonder if any African presidents are reading this? Hope so!

You can hear my conversation with Macky 2 on This Is Africa on BBC World Service radio, external and partner stations across Africa this weekend.

Randy Jo Sa'ah
BBC News, Yaoundé

Image source, AFP

Cameroon is the latest African nation to agree a military deal with Russia, signed last week in Moscow by the two countries' defence ministers.

The deal is said to cover weapons, intelligence-gathering and training, as well as the exchange of UN peacekeepers.

It does not come as a surprise to many Cameroonians. The nation also appears to have been inching toward Russia on the diplomatic and economic fronts, and had abstained in a UN vote on a resolution to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

But the timing of the agreement, amid Russia's belligerence against its neighbour and accusations of war crimes, has been criticised by many in Cameroon.

Former colonial power France has historically been Cameroon's main military, economic and diplomatic partner.

However with this latest deal with Russia and previous military hardware purchases from China, President Paul Biya appears not to be severing ties with France but rather widening his sources of support.

This equipment is geared towards fighting insecurity in the country, with the Russian ambassador to Cameroon having previously pledged support in the war against Boko Haram militants in the north.

Another major crisis in the country's Anglophone regions - where separatists have waged war in recent years - has killed more than 6,000 people and forced at least 765,000 from their homes.

You may also be interested in:

• Why France faces so much anger in West Africa
• Red Dragons and Tigers - the rebels fighting for independence
• A quick guide to Cameroon

The authorities in Sudan have released 25 people who were arrested for protesting against October's coup in the capital, Khartoum.

Some of them were detained during demonstrations, others were picked up from their homes.

A statement by the Sudanese Emergency Lawyers, external says at least 27 others remain detention in Khartoum's Soba jail.

It said high-profile members of a committee set up by the unity government to dismantle businesses and institutions loyal to Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted as president in 2019, also remained in custody.

Many others were still being held in three other jails outside Khartoum, it added.

Among those being detained incommunicado are Khalid Omar Yousif, the former cabinet affairs minister and Muhamad el-Faki, a member of the former sovereign council that was supposed to be overseeing the post-Bashir transition to civilian rule.

Mr Yousif's brother says the British embassy in Khartoum hosted an an iftar, the meal held to break the Ramadan fast, earlier this week with an empty chair with Mr Yousif's name on it - a sign of the international community's support for the release of detainees.

Image source, hmao.sledcom.ru

Zambia’s foreign ministry has confirmed that a 21-year-old Zambian student was arrested last Sunday in Russia for twerking at a World War Two memorial in the city of Khanty-Mansiysk.

Tionge Ziba, a first-year student at Khanty-Mansiysk's Yugra State University, has been released from custody on bail but her case has been passed on to the city’s prosecutor, the ministry says.

The video of her dancing on the Eternal Flame war memorial was filmed on 14 April, the statement said.

Ms Ziba then reportedly posted the video to Instagram two days later with the caption: “Shaking… for the dead, sure they are sleeping well tonight”, which court documents given to Zambia’s embassy in Moscow describe as an “offensive caption allegedly joking about Nazism”.

The regional investigative department posted a video of Ms Ziba apologising for her dance, external, though at the time it did not identify her by name or nationality.

“I want to apologise to everyone for the video I posted on 16 April,” she says in English.

“I posted a video of me dancing on this monument and I didn’t intend it to be offensive - or disrespectful to those who died.

“I’m very, very sorry to everyone. I hope I’m understood and forgiven.”

Zambia’s foreign ministry says its embassy has been told that the police will investigate the case over the next three months and “the exercise will be conducted in a humane manner to avoid interference with Ms Ziba’s academic calendar”.

According to the privately owned Kommersant newspaper, external, she could face a fine of between $25,000 and $65,000 (£20,000 and £50,000), forced labour for a term of one to five years or imprisonment for a term of up to five years.

Ivory Coast must not "throw away all the good things" while preparing for a home Africa Cup of Nations in 2023, says ex-Chelsea forward Salomon Kalou.

People in Kenyan are expressing their upset about LGBTQ discrimination after

Manuel Toledo
Venice, Italy

Image source, M Toledo

One of the pre-opening events at this year’s Venice Biennale in Italy has been the African Art in Venice Forum.

It has involved artists, curators, researchers and representatives of cultural institutions from the continent and the diaspora.

They discussed themes such as intra-African co-operation in the cultural sector, digital art and its challenges to the traditional art market, and women’s leadership in the African creative sector.

One of the panels focused on the debate about the restitution of art taken away from the continent during colonial times, and the influence of history on contemporary art.

There was also a talk with Ethiopian artists. A series of works by one of them, Merikokeb Berhanu, is being shown at the Giardini pavilion of the international exhibition next to one of this year’s recipients of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña.

Image source, M Toledo

Sammy Baloji, an artist from the Democratic Republic of Congo, closed the forum with a conversation about his research into African art in the collection of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy.

The debates of the African Art in Venice Forum 2022 will be uploaded to their YouTube channel, external.

Chris Ewokor
BBC News, Abuja

Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered his security agencies to immediately rescue all those held hostage by kidnappers and what he described as "terrorists" across the country.

Speaking to military and police chiefs in the capital, Abuja, he said they had not been doing enough to end insecurity in Nigeria.

The government has been criticised for failing to protect its citizens.

The country has seen a rise in kidnapping, clashes between cattle herders and farmers in the central region, as well as banditry and an Islamist insurgency in the north-east.

Mohanad Hashim
BBC News

Image source, AFP

Motorcycles in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and surrounding areas will no longer be able to carry passengers - a move intended to curb a rise in armed robberies committed by bikers.

The order was issued by acting governor of Khartoum state - and gives police the authority to stop bikes disobeying the ban on passengers.

First time offenders face potential penalties of two months in jail or a fine of 100,000 Sudanese pounds ($225, £175) or both penalties.

Repeat offenders would face up to four months in jail and a fine of $1,120), third time offenders risk a year in jail and the confiscation of their motorcycles.

The new measures have been introduced to tackle what has become known as the “long nines” phenomenon - referring to motorbikes which carry multiple armed men aboard.

They are often operate in gangs and are believed to be behind a wave of crime in the past year that has become worse since last October’s coup.

Some believe the gangs are part of a strategy being used by the junta to get people to stop anti-coup protests amid general lawlessness.

Commentators note the reluctance of the police to deal with the criminals in contrast to the zeal the security forces show in supressing the pro-democracy demonstrations.

But acting governor Ahmed Osman Hamza told the Sudanese news agency (Suna) that "high population density, the difficult economic situation and displacement" were behind the violence.

The ban on passengers is unlikely to go down well with the many Sudanese who have turned to motorbikes because of their affordability.

They depend on them for their daily transport and living, and in recent months they have been used as makeshift ambulances, ferrying injured anti-coup protesters to hospitals.

Though most agree more needs to be done about the gangs as some vigilantes have taken the law into their own hands and videos of lynchings have been shared on social media.

Ex-Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki is remembered for ending the stranglehold of the former ruling party.

The artwork pays tribute to the South African great, who was given Freedom of the City in 1994.

Reuters reports that the biggest hospital in Ethiopia's troubled Tigray region has had to send home 240 patients, external after running out of food last week, knowing that many of them will die.

Nurses at Ayder Referral Hospital told the news agency that babies with meningitis and tuberculosis were among those sent away, as well as a 14-year-old boy with HIV.

"The families said, pray for us, instead of dying here let's go home and die there," pediatric ward nurse Tedros Fissehaye told Reuters.

He said he and other staff members were deeply saddened but had no more tears left to cry, adding "we have finished our tears for months now".

Reuters quotes another nurse at Ayder Referral Hospital as saying drugs shortages meant they were down to their last 10% of medications, although some HIV tablets had arrived last month and staff were trying to treat other illnesses with any antibiotics they could source.

The Ethiopian government has not commented on Reuters' report.

The UN says 90% of Tigray's population is in urgent need of food and humanitarian supplies as a result of the war that began in November 2020.

None of Ayder Referral Hospital's medics has been paid since July, Reuters says, and staff themselves had relied on the hospital for food.

Former Togo and Sudan boss Hubert Velud is appointed as the new coach of Burkina Faso, succeeding Kamou Malo.

Manuel Toledo
Venice, Italy

Image source, M Toledo

The 59th Venice Biennale opens to the public this weekend with works by artists from all over the world, including many from Africa and its diaspora.

The international exhibition is called A Milk of Dreams, after the title of a book by British surrealist painter and storyteller Leonora Carrington.

This year's show, put together by Italian curator Cecilia Alemani, features many relatively little known artists, the majority of them women.

At the Giardini - one of the two main exhibition spaces - there are works by Zimbabwe's Kudzanai-Violet Hwami and South Africa’s Bronwyn Katz, both born in 1993.

There are also paintings by Algeria’s Baya Mahieddine (1931-1998) and by Antoinette Lubaki who was born at the end of 19th Century in present-day Democratic Republic of Congo.

Image source, M Toledo

According to the organisers, Lubaki’s story "was deeply shaped by the exotic allure that Europeans saw in her art".

"Even today, these works show a sensibility unparalleled in the world of modern art."

The exhibition runs until the end of November 2022.

Mwai Kibaki ended 40 years of one-party rule but his 2007 re-election sparked nationwide violence.

BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

Tunisia's President Kaïs Saïed has issued a decree that replaces members of the Independent Electoral Commission with his own appointees.

The commission has been seen as one of the last official bodies to remain independent in Tunisia since Mr Saïed took executive powers and dissolved parliament last year.

This latest move seems likely to fuel further opposition to his rule by those who believe that he has taken too much power.

It also seems all but certain to stir further controversy over parliamentary elections that the Tunisian president has said will be held by the end of this year.

More about Tunisia:

• Judges locked out of their offices after president's decree
• Democrats, despots and the fight for power
• A quick guide to Tunisia

Ethiopians queue outside the embassy after being told 'the Russians were looking for ex-service members'.

Esther Ogola
BBC News, Nairobi

The hashtag #JusticeForSheila is trending in Kenya following the recent murder of a non-binary lesbian in the country.

According to LGBTQ organisations, Sheila Lumumba's body was discovered several days ago. It is also believed that they were raped.

Members of the LGBTQ community and human rights organisations - including Kenya's Inend , externaland Amnesty International, external - have condemned the murder and called on the authorities to investigate.

According to Kenya's National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (NGLHRC), Sheila's case is not isolated as the group has documented increasing incidents of violence against members of the LGBTQ community, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2021 the hashtags #JusticeForErica and #JusticeForJoash were trending following the murder of trans-woman activist Erica Chandra and LGBTQ activist Joash Mosoti:

Gay sex is criminalised in Kenya, punishable with 14 years' imprisonment. Members of the country's LGBTQ community routinely face discrimination and stigma.

Efforts to decriminalise gay sex were thwarted in 2019 when Kenya's High Court upheld the existing law.