Image source, AFP

The African Union (AU) has condemned Sunday's attack that killed 11 Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt said the attack targeted a water pumping station, news agencies report.

Egypt has battled militants in Sinai for years. The Islamic State (IS) group said it carried out Sunday's attack.

In a tweet, AU Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat condemned "in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in Sinai".

Image source, AFP

Dozens of people were killed after armed men raided a gold mine in Djugu in the Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern Ituri province on Sunday.

The AFP news agency quotes a local official as saying that 29 bodies had been retrieved from the artisanal mine.

Among the dead was a four-month-old baby, it said.

In a statement, the ministry of communication blamed the Codeco rebel group for the attack.

"The government specifies that this umpteenth barbaric and cowardly act of Codeco terrorists on innocent populations will in no way shake its determination to restore peace," the ministry said, external.

"The army is working day and night to completely eliminate the armed groups here in Ituri," army spokesperson is quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

The Codeco group has previously been accused of carrying out raids against civilians in recent months.

It’s blamed for killing at least a dozen people at a church in March, and another 60 in February.

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Online lessons or no lessons at all continue in 23 countries, two years after the pandemic began.

e Gambia enjoy a dream Africa Cup of Nations debut by beating Mauritania 1-0 in Limbe to go joint-top of Group F.

As the year prepares to turn, Verity Sharp dials up singer songwriters who aren’t living in their country of birth. Are they more mindful of their roots at this time of year? Has the pandemic made them feel closer or further away from home? Or is music all they’ve needed to keep them rooted? Love brought Falle Nioke from his home in Guinea, West Africa to the British seaside town of Margate. Playing the local music of his Coniagui tribe to passers-by in the harbour helps keep him in touch with his ancestors while making new friends. He talks about the similarities and differences between the two locations and sings to remember, accompanying himself on his homemade gongoma.

Presented and produced by Verity Sharp. A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns ends his series of essays on cities influenced by African migration in Cape Town.

Making his way around a city he knows intimately, respects abundantly and loves profusely, Lindsay asks what it means to be Capetonian. From the city's tragic racial history and its legacy, to the wave of migration from elsewhere in Africa, this is a place whose identity is constantly shifting. And as he concludes his series of essays, Lindsay ponders his own ambivalent feelings towards this demographic, political, social, spiritual change.

Producer: Giles Edwards

Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns continues his tour of great cities influenced by their relationship with Africa in Fort-de-France, the capital of the Caribbean island of Martinique.

On an island where, as he puts it, Gallic efficiency and Cartesian rigour rub shoulders with local Creole flavour, all in the enervating tropical heat, Lindsay examines the question of identity. Fort-de-France, says Lindsay, looks to Paris for her modus vivendi and to Africa for her raison d’être. So was the decision of Martinique’s most famous son - the poet, playwright, polymath, founder of the Negritude literary movement, politician and former Mayor of Fort-de-France, Aimé Césaire - to stave off independence and remain part of France, the right one? On his walk around the city Lindsay encounters French waiters, BMW-driving witch doctors, and a decapitated lady, as he considers this question.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns continues his series of essays examining five great world cities through the prism of their relationship with Africa. In the Jamaican capital, Kingston, this different lens leads to a focus not on pristine beaches, sunshine and cricket, but instead on rebellion and spirituality.

Lindsay considers Jamaica's history, intimately inter-woven with the tragedies, iniquities and horror of slavery; but also one defined by those who have refused to accept that status quo, from Queen Nanny to Marcus Garvey. And as he walks the city's streets, from downtown to New Kingston, where Jamaica's thriving community of entrepreneurs, business people and scientists is based, he ponders Kingston's spiritual connections with East Africa - and Ethiopia - and how profoundly they have affected the city.

Producer: Giles Edwards

In the second of his essays on great cities which have been influenced by African migration, writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns takes a walk around Philadelphia.

It's a city whose history is tied up with notions of America and of freedom, and as he wanders the streets of Philadelphia, Lindsay ponders the relationship between these two powerful ideas. They're not always easy to reconcile in Philadelphia - where the chronic racialised street homeless situation, the city’s poverty and stark racial divide leave him feeling a distinct lack of 'Brotherly Love' - in a city which takes that as its moniker. As Lindsay considers some of the philosophical questions which arise, he also reflects upon a community of African migrants making their home in the city with its own fascinating and surprising relationship with Philadelphia.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns introduces his new series of essays on five great cities which have been influenced by African migration, as he discusses Marseille.

Looking for inspiration to Ian Fleming's 'Thrilling Cities', Lindsay wants to eschew the loud, brash main avenues and explore instead the quiet back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favour of lesser known, more local and edgier haunts. But he also wants to ditch the colonial mindset always looking for European influence, and instead examine how these cities have been affected by migration from Africa.

And in Marseille, the first of his five, Lindsay finds it all: a truly Franco-African metropolis, infused with gastronomic, religious, linguistic, musical, sartorial and literary influences from the other side of the Mediterranean.

Producer: Giles Edwards

Dina Rezk from the University of Reading looks at politics and the role of humour as she profiles Bassem Youssef “the Jon Stewart of Egyptian satire”. As protests reverberate around the world she looks back at the Arab Spring and asks what we can learn from the popular culture that took off during that uprising and asks whether those freedoms remain. You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about filming the Arab Spring https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005sjw and in a discussion about Mocking Power past and present https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dzww

You can find of Dina's research https://egyptrevolution2011.ac.uk/

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics to turn their research into radio.

Producer: Robyn Read

How the BBC helped to find thousands of children who got lost during the Rwandan genocide.

In northern Tanzania there is a tradition of FGM - female genital mutilation. The 'cutting season' lasts for six weeks. Afterwards, the adolescent victims are often expected to marry. But girls in Serengeti District are saying 'no' to FGM. And dozens of them have fled to a new safe house in the town of Mugumu to escape this bloody, life-threatening rite of passage. For Crossing Continents, Linda Pressly travels to Mugumu to meet the girls - and the woman who has given them refuge, Rhobi Samwelly. She listens in as Rhobi engages in delicate and often emotional negotiations with parents intent on mutilating their daughters. Will the girls ever feel safe enough to return home?

Each year, the US government does a strange and slightly surprising thing: it gives away 50,000 green cards (permanent resident visas) to people chosen at random via a lottery.

But becoming an American is not easy, even if you do win a golden ticket.

For Crossing Continents, Leo Hornak follows the story of Abdi Nor, a young Somali lottery winner living in one of the toughest slums in Kenya, as he prepares for his final US embassy interview and the chance of a new life in the States.

But as Abdi's interview date approaches, the obstacles to him achieving his American dream appear to grow ever greater.

In one remote district in Ivory Coast, men are going back to school. Their studies are part of a UN-backed project dubbed 'the school for husbands' and designed to save the lives of women and children. The idea is to teach decision makers - the men - about the importance of family planning, check-ups, and pre-natal care for their wives. The aim is to help women and also improve general welfare in farming villages where food is scarce and incomes are dependent on the weather and good fortune. Lucy Ash hears stories from the schools for husbands and finds out why Ivory Coast's health system is struggling to recover from the post-election crisis three years ago, even as the country's economy roars ahead.

Producer: Mike Wendling.

Barely a year after Egypt's post-revolution elections were held, millions of protestors took to the streets to demand the resignation of President Mohammed Morsi. After a short stand-off with army leaders, he was removed from power in what many describe as a coup d'etat.

The subsequent clashes between Mr Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood supporters and security forces have proved violent and bloody and the country is once again being governed by the military - but what were the events which closed this short chapter in the fledgling Egyptian democracy?

Christopher de Bellaigue speaks to insiders from across Egypt's political spectrum to reveal the mistakes and power-plays which led to the downfall of the country's first democratically elected president.

Contributors:

Dr Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, former Freedom and Justice Party MP for Luxor.

Dr Hisham Hellyer, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (London) and the Brookings Institution (Washington).

Dr Omar Ashour, senior lecturer in Middle East Politics and Security Studies, University of Exeter.

Angy Ghannam, Head of BBC Monitoring, Cairo.

Dr Wael Haddara, former communications adviser to President Mohammed Morsi.

Dr Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, founder of the Strong Egypt party.

Producer: Richard Fenton-Smith Editor: Innes Bowen

At this crucial moment in Egypt’s story, this month’s World Book Club talks to one of the country’s great writers, Ahdaf Soueif, about her internationally acclaimed novel The Map of Love.

In her Booker-shortlisted bestseller Soueif weaves together two poignant stories separated by a century of Egyptian history: a love story between aristocratic English Anna Winterbourne and romantic firebrand Sharif al-Baroudi, is set amidst the brutality of British imperialism and the fierce political battles of the Egyptian Nationalists. This tale reaches across time to an account of their descendants negotiating passions and political unrest in late 20th Century Egypt. We hear how Soueif had originally set out to write a ‘tawdry romance’ but hadn’t managed to stop herself writing something much more meaningful and monumental!

Listen to this great Egyptian voice clearly and compellingly explain exactly what has gone wrong in Egypt, in her eyes, over the last decade.

Two and a half years ago, oil started flowing from Ghana's first commercial offshore oilfield. Shortly after the taps were turned on, Rob Walker visited the hub for the new industry: the once sleepy port of Takoradi. He found a mixture of ambition and uncertainty in a rapidly expanding boomtown. Rob now returns to Takoradi to meet people he met last time and find out whether their dreams have been realised. Producer: Katharine Hodgson.