Image source, AFP

Former Zambia's Foreign Affairs Minister Joseph Malanji has been arrested for alleged money-laundering activities.

The authorities said Mr Malanji was arrested for owning a hotel suspected to be bought by proceeds of crime.

He is also suspected to have procured a helicopter $700,000 (£530,000) from proceeds of crime.

Mr Malanji has previously denied the allegations.

He was arrested by the anti-money laundering unit of Zambia’s Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC), becoming the second ex-minister to be arrested in a week after former justice minister Given Lubinda who was charged on Tuesday.

“The hotel has since been seized together with the two helicopters, the other one being the helicopter he was arrested for earlier which are currently in South Africa and arrangements are being made to have them brought into the country,” the commission's spokesman Mathias Kamanga said in a statement.

Mr Malanji has been released on police bond, according to the local Diamond TV.

He served in the cabinet of former President Edgar Lungu, who lost the presidential election in August 2021.

Zambia’s new government is pursuing an anti-corruption drive after winning elections last year. It is yet to secure any major convictions.

Ishaq Khalid
BBC News, Abuja

A Nigerian father lost four of his children after they drowned following a boat accident in the northern state of Kebbi.

Musa Labaran, who survived the accident, told the BBC that he made unsuccessful attempts to save the fifth child who was closer to him on the boat.

He said bodies of the four children had been recovered. The fifth one is presumed dead but his body has not been found.

The authorities and residents say the family was going to a farm across a river on Wednesday when their boat capsized in the Yauri area during strong winds.

Nigeria experiences frequent boat accidents.

In May last year, more than 100 people drowned when their boat capsized in Kebbi state, while in December about 30 people died in a similar accident in Kano state.

Such mishaps are usually blamed on overloading, poor maintenance of boats and bad weather conditions.

BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

Egypt has asked for help from the IMF as the government struggles to deal with the impact of the war in Ukraine.

As the world's biggest importer of wheat, Egypt relies heavily on grain from Ukraine and Russia.

This week it set a fixed price for unsubsidised bread with the aim of controlling rising food prices due to the disruption to the wheat supply caused by the war.

Its tourism sector has also suffered a further setback, after two years of problems linked to the pandemic.

Earlier this week, the government in Cairo allowed the currency to devalue.

The IMF praised recent economic relief measures announced by the Egyptian authorities.

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A host of by-elections present a key test for the new opposition and the country's democratic credentials.

Two of Africa's biggest football rivals Nigeria and Ghana go head-to-head for a place at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

That's all for now from the BBC Africa Live team until Thursday morning.

There will be an automated news feed until then. You can also keep up to date on the BBC News website, or by listening to the Africa Today podcast.

A reminder of our wise words of the day:

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And we leave you with this photo of a chef making chapatis for his restaurant in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, earlier on Wednesday:

Image source, AFP

Hanna Temuari
BBC Amharic

Image source, Reuters

The CEO of Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest carrier, is resigning from his position.

Tewolde Gebremariam has led the airline over an 11 year period, during which it has seen significant growth.

Ethiopian Airlines said he was taking early retirement because of health issues, explaining that he had been getting medical treatment in the US for the last six months.

It said that under his leadership the carrier had grown four-fold.

He has also been praised for leading the airline into profit during the coronavirus pandemic.

Patience Atuhaire
BBC News, Kampala

Image source, Pen Prize

A Ugandan court has allowed an arrest warrant to be issued for an international award-winning author who fled to Germany last month.

Kakwenza Rukirabashaija jumped bail after he was refused permission to leave the country to seek treatment for injuries he says he sustained while in detention.

The court had refused to give him his passport.

Rukirabashaija, who last year won the Pen Pinter Prize for an international writer of courage, was arrested in December.

The 33-year-old was charged with offensive communication for making unflattering remarks about President Yoweri Museveni and his son on Twitter. He denied the charges.

The writer is best known for The Greedy Barbarian, a satirical novel which describes high-level corruption in a fictional country, and Banana Republic: Where Writing is Treasonous, an account of the torture he was subjected to while in detention in 2020.

The women's husbands were executed after protesting against pollution caused by oil leaks.

Favour Nunoo
BBC Pidgin

"My name is Elizabeth Amoaa - the woman with two wombs, two cervixes and two vagina canals," a 38-year-old Ghanaian tells BBC Pidgin.

Her tone is almost defiant as she explains how she has struggled with an unusual medical condition.

It was not until she was 32 that doctors figured out what was wrong with her.

Now based in the UK, Ms Amoaa says she spent years with crippling stomach pain that often stopped her being able to work before she was diagnosed with uterus didelphys - sometimes called double uterus, a rare congenital abnormality.

She even became pregnant and gave birth prematurely to a daughter in 2010 without being diagnosed. She was still having periods while she was pregnant as the foetus was growing in her healthier right womb.

“I can be pregnant in my right womb and still have my menstrual periods through my left. This is why when I was pregnant with my daughter I was seeing blood,” she says.

After multiple surgeries, scans and medication, she finally understood what was happening with her body in 2015.

Ms Amoaa now wants the world to know about her plight, so other women do not have to suffer.

She faced a backlash when she first went public on a Ghanaian radio station talking about her condition, but is determined to educate people.

She has set up a charity called Speciallady Awareness and written a book, published last November, about her experience.

“My advice to women going through my kind of condition is: do not keep quiet; do not suffer in silence; seek early diagnosis and appropriate treatment - and remember, you are special,” she says.

Ishaq Khalid
BBC News, Abuja

Image source, AFP

Nigerian politician Atiku Abubakar has formally declared his intention to contest next February’s presidential election.

The former vice-president is the first person to make a formal declaration and wants to be the candidate for the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

It will be the 75-year-old’s sixth bid for the presidency.

He told a packed conference hall full of his supporters in the capital, Abuja, that he was a “unifier” for a “new Nigeria”.

During the event, that was streamed live on social media, he also said he would tackle insecurity, revamp the oil-dependent economy and boost education.

Mr Abubakar, who served as vice-president under Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2007, is from northern Nigeria.

He is likely to face strong opposition from within his party to make the PDP's ticket because of an informal agreement to rotate the presidency between the north and south of the country.

Muhammadu Buhari, the incumbent president who heads the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), is from the north and is finishing his second and final term.

The APC is also scratching its head over whom to field as Mr Buhari's successor.

Two southerners - current Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos state - are believed to be among APC front-runners.

Image source, AFP

Nearly 840,000 coronavirus vaccines have expired in Kenya before they could be administered, the country’s Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe has said, external.

The AstraZeneca jabs were part of 2.2 million doses donated to the country through the global Covax scheme in January - with an expiry date of 28 February.

The minister said there had been two major drives to use them in time - and vaccine rates had risen - but a preliminary survey showed they had not all be used.

"Any expired dose represents a missed opportunity to save a life," Mr Kagwe said.

In future, the country would only accept vaccine donations with a shelf-life of at least four months, he said.

Complacency and hesitancy - in particular over AstraZeneca - were also problems that needed to be tackled, the minister said.

“We continue to witness vaccine hesitancy attributed to rumours and misinformation especially around fertility concerns. These rumours do not have any scientific evidence and are therefore baseless and must be ignored.”

The take-up of second doses was also declining with only 30% of those eligible coming forward, he warned.

Nearly eight million adults in the East Africa nation, which has a population of 48.5 million, are fully vaccinated.

The Kenyan presidential candidate insists he is independent of President Kenyatta's influence.

Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah are something of an odd couple, international adversaries, rivals to score goals but friends who work together for Liverpool.

Ishaq Khalid
BBC News, Abuja

Image source, Nema

A fire underneath one of the main bridges in Lagos has brought chaos to the Nigerian commercial hub.

All traffic has been re-routed from the Eko Bridge which links Lagos Island to the mainland - the result has been gridlock.

The head of the city's fire services described the fire, which broke out in the early hours of Wednesday, as disastrous.

There have been no reports of casualties

The area under the bridge is home to hundreds of small stalls, many of which have been destroyed.

Image source, Nema

Reports say there has been looting of merchandise and opportunistic thefts from cars stuck in traffic.

Emmanuel Igunza
BBC News

Image source, Reuters

A gunfight at the entrance to the international airport complex outside the Somali capital, Mogadishu, has left at least eight people dead.

Aden Adde International Airport hosts peacekeepers, the offices of UN organisations and diplomatic missions.

A police spokesman told the BBC that five of the dead were foreigners, including an African Union force soldier.

The nationalities of those killed have not yet been established.

Two of the attackers - suspected jihadists - were also killed as they reportedly tried to force their way into the secure zone.

Witnesses have told the BBC they heard heavy gunfire and saw black smoke billowing from a section of the airport. Other reports say the UN was hit by mortars.

The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group said it was behind the attack.

Its fighters have stepped up attacks as much-delayed parliamentary elections proceed using a complex and indirect system.

Image source, Reuters

A court in the Netherlands has ruled against four Nigerian widows in their lawsuit against oil giant Shell over the execution of their husbands by Nigeria's military government in 1995.

The men had been part of a group of nine activists involved in peaceful protests against pollution caused by oil leaks in Ogoniland in the Niger Delta. Best known among them was author Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Image source, TIM LAMBON/GREENPEACE

Dubbed the “Ogoni nine”, they were hanged after a secret trial which saw them being convicted of murdering four traditional leaders. They denied the charge, saying they had been framed.

The judges in The Hague said there was not enough evidence to support the widows' claim that Shell had been involved in bribing witnesses whose testimony contributed to their conviction.

Two of the widows - Victoria Bera and Esther Kioble - were in court for the ruling, reports the BBC’s Anna Holligan from The Hague.

They had sat patiently in the front row - waiting almost three decades for justice.

Outside the courtroom Ms Kioble told the BBC she was happy her voice had been heard. She had testified in court in 2019, explaining how her husband’s death had left her traumatised.

She told Reuters she aimed to appeal: "I want their names exonerated. That's what I want and that's what I'm fighting for."

Ms Bera said she would continue to fight the Ogoni people's battle against oil pollution.

Shell paid out more than $15m (£11.4m) to the dead men's families in 2009 without acknowledging any wrongdoing.

Image source, Getty Images

After crashing out of the Africa Cup of Nations in the group stage Algeria and Djamel Belmadi are looking to make amends by qualifying for the World Cup in Qatar.

BBC World Service

Somali state media says the security forces have thwarted an attack on a military base at the sprawling international airport complex outside the capital, Mogadishu.

It says two jihadists were killed as they tried to force their way in.

A column of smoke can be seen rising from the area which hosts international peacekeepers, the offices of UN organisations and diplomatic missions as well as hotels.

No flights are reported to be taking off.

The Islamist group al-Shabab said its militants had attacked the biggest foreign military base in Somalia.

Attacks by al-Shabab have become more frequent while voting has been taking place in much-delayed parliamentary elections.