Plans to stop domestic flights in protest at the spiralling cost of aviation fuel are suspended.

For the latest updates, go to bbc.com/africalive.

A Nigerian designer is making NFTs of African artefacts in Western museums to help local artists.

Ex-Inter Milan forward Mohamed Kallon pays tribute to former Sierra Leone team-mate Lamin 'Junior Tumbu' Conteh, who has died aged 45.

Mass funerals are held in South Africa after the country's most deadly natural disaster.

Ishaq Khalid
BBC News, Abuja

Image source, AFP

Godwin Emefiele, Nigeria’s central bank governor, says he has yet to take a decision on whether to run for the country’s presidency next year.

It follows news on Friday that he was seeking the ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari, who is serving his second and final term.

In a tweet, external the 60-year-old economist has explained that the nomination forms for his candidacy were bought on his behalf by a group of his supporters.

It costs 100m naira (about $240,000, £195,000) to purchase the APC's nomination papers.

Mr Emefiele said it was a serious decision to take and he would make it over the coming days - and would buy his own forms if he did go ahead.

It is unprecedented for a serving central bank governor to join the presidential race and news of Mr Emefiele’s apparent bid has sparked outrage.

Many are questioning whether rules have been broken, demanding that civil servants resign before seeking any political office.

Nigeria’s main political parties are expected to hold their primaries later this month to meet the election commission’s dateline of 3 June for the submission of their candidates for the February 2023 election.

Ishaq Khalid
BBC News, Abuja

Mass burials have been held for 48 people killed in north-western Nigeria during an attack on a village by notorious gangsters who operate in the region.

Known locally as bandits, the gunmen - often riding motorbikes - steal animals, kidnap for ransom, tax farmers and kill those who confront them.

Details are only now emerging of Wednesday's raid in the remote Bakura area of Zamfara state because of communication problems.

Dozens of gunmen on motorbikes attacked Sabon-Garin Damri village shooting at residents, taking livestock and forcing hundreds of people to flee.

Image source, AFP

A local official told the BBC a military helicopter and soldiers had been deployed to Bakura following the attack.

But the security forces appear to be overstretched as they deal with major threats across the country including:

• The armed gangs - which operate in the north-west, though not exclusively - targeting unprotected rural communities, schools as well as travellers on major highways
• The continuing Islamist insurgency in the north-east
• And separatists demanding a breakaway state in the south-east, who have recently stepped up attacks.

You may also be interested in:

• The motorcycle bandits terrorising northern Nigeria
• 'I was kidnapped and now only travel by train'
• Nigerian outrage at brazen bandit attacks

Prices have risen almost fourfold this year, mainly triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Penelope Lively, now 89 years old, is the author of more than 30 books for children, six short story collections and 17 novels. Shortlisted three times for the Booker prize, she won it in 1987 for her time-shifting novel Moon Tiger, in which a terminally ill woman looks back at wartime adventures, love affairs and fraught family life. Dame Penelope Lively has won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award for her children’s books. She is also the author of three volumes of memoirs.

Dame Penelope recalls her early childhood in Cairo, and how real-life wartime Egypt inspired the fiction of Moon Tiger. Andrew Lang's Tales of Troy and Greece, a retelling of the Homeric myths, first sparked her creative imagination at the age of ten. Having moved to England in late 1945, she remembers the devastation left by the Blitz, and how seeing for herself the ruins in London, both ancient and modern, prompted a lifelong fascination with archaeology. An extremely wide reader, she discusses the influence of her lifetimes' reading habit on her fiction; in particular The Making Of The English Landscape by W.G. Hoskins, a book about the strata of history that have helped shape England, which inspired some of the recurring themes of memory and loss in her own work.

Producer: Edwina Pitman

Mass graves are being dug up to hide evidence of killing in western Tigray, witnesses say.

That's all for now from the BBC Africa Live team this week. There will be an automated news feed until we're back on Monday morning at bbc.com/africalive.

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:

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

And we leave you with this picture of volunteers in South Africa who continue a tradition started at the height of apartheid to prepare meals for the less fortunate as part of the Muslim Eid celebrations - one of our favourites from our gallery of the week's best photos:

Image source, Getty Images

He fears being killed by Kenyan state agents as is alleged has happened to other terror suspects.

Qualifying matches for the 2023 Nations Cup have been spread across the first two weeks in June to accommodate World Cup warm-up matches.

Ishaq Khalid
BBC News, Abuja

Image source, Getty Images

The governor of Nigeria's central bank intends to run in next year's presidential election.

Godwin Emefiele, 60, is seeking the nomination as a presidential candidate for the governing All Progressives Congress (APC).

Sources at the ruling party’s headquarters told the BBC he had bought a nomination form to contest the party’s primaries. It is unprecedented in Nigerian politics for a serving central bank chief to join the presidential race.

Among the other APC candidates are Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and former Lagos state governor Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar is among several candidates seeking the nomination for the opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP).

Nigeria's political parties have until 3 June to choose their presidential candidates. The election is due to take place in February 2023.

Aspen Pharmacare says it may have to stop producing the jabs in South Africa unless demand rises.

Nichola Mandil
BBC News, Juba

Image source, Getty Images

The announcement that South Sudan’s crude oil has been sold in advance to pay for salary arrears has come in for criticism.

On Thursday, Finance Minister Agak Achuil said output up until 2027 had been sold in order to pay the salaries of civil servants, who have not been paid since around September 2021.

But a prominent economist has hit at the government, saying it has failed to manage the economy properly.

“If you decide to make your life depend on loans, you consume the future,” said Ahmed Morgan Yanga, a professor of economics at the University of Juba.

He said it was akin to “pronouncing the country economically dead”.

Oil is the backbone of the economy in South Sudan, which is recovering from a brutal civil war that erupted not long after its independence in 2011.

Dr Yanga said the government should not just rely on oil revenues, recommending it look to minerals and the tourism sector to raise money.

He said corruption was also an issue that needed to be addressed as he suspected vast amounts were being lost to graft.

Wydad Casablanca coach Walid Regragui warns his squad to be wary of Petro Atletico in the first leg of their African Champions League semi-final tie.

Ishaq Khalid
BBC News, Abuja

Seventeen people have been buried in north-western Nigeria after drowning when their boat capsized as they returned home from celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid.

Their funerals were held on Thursday night after their bodies were recovered by divers in the remote area of Mai’Aduwa in Katsina State, an emergency official told the BBC.

Image source, Saddam Umar

Most of the victims were women and children returning from a village they had visited for the Eid holiday earlier this week.

Two people survived, but it is still not clear what caused the boat to overturn.

Officials say boat services in the area, where many rely on the vessels for fishing and transport, will not resume until more safety measures are put in place.

Such accidents are frequent in Nigeria, often blamed on the poor maintenance of the boats, overloading and bad weather.

Image source, Getty Images

DJ Edu
Presenter of This Is Africa on BBC World Service

Image source, @NomfundoMoh

South Africa just keeps on giving us huge talents, and fabulous voices - many of them female. Nomfundo Moh is just 21 years old but already has achieved so much.

Her song Phakade Lami, released in 2021 and featuring two other notable female artists - Ami Faku and Sha Sha, has become a massive hit and led to her being picked by Apple Music as one of their rising stars from Africa.

It also no doubt had something to do with her being signed by the major label, Universal.

Despite all of this success, Nomfundo - whose real name Nomfundo Ngcobo - has her feet firmly on the ground.

When she spoke to the BBC, she was just as keen to talk about finishing her studies as she was about her music.

Nomfundo was inspired to do social work by what she saw around her growing up in rural KwaZulu-Natal province.

Perhaps Nomfundo’s community spirit is inspired by her grandfather who is a pastor. Her church upbringing certainly has had a big role to play in her music.

Love and passion are the emotions powering Nomfundo’s hit song.

Nomfundo gives a lot of credit to her fellow artists for the song’s success, and she was generous enough to allow Ami Faku’s stunning verse to take pride of place at the start of Phakade Lami.

You can hear Nomfundo Moh on This is Africa this Saturday on BBC World Service radio (click on the link to listen online) and partner stations across Africa.

Shingai Nyoka
BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

South Africa’s daily Covid infections rose by almost 60% between Wednesday and Thursday amidst concerns that the country faces a possible fifth wave.

There were 9,757 new recorded cases and the positivity and hospitalisation rates are up, according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

The health department says two Omicron subvariants are driving a surge which is concentrated in three major provinces - Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Some epidemiological experts argue that from a technical definition the country has already reached a fifth wave, and earlier than had been anticipated.

On Thursday, the National Department of Health extended by three months some regulations including the wearing of masks indoors, restrictions to public gatherings and persons entering the country. It pushed back a deadline to announce revised health regulations to allow for more public consultation following the lifting of the two-year long Covid disaster declaration.

South Africans were looking forward to greater freedoms after the state of disaster was lifted, but the government is still trying to navigate the course for a new normal.

The country has been the worst affected by the Covid pandemic on the continent and has faced some of the harshest restrictions. But the authorities have wrestled down the number of deaths which stood at seven for the last 24-48 hours.