BBC Focus on Africa radio

Image source, Ramily

Previously unseen portraits of ordinary people and everyday life in Madagascar are going on show in the country's capital decades after they were taken.

They are the work of Emile Rakotondrazaka, known as Ramily, who was regarded as the grandfather of Malagasy photography.

This is the first major exhibition of his work since he died in 2017, and it documents the post-independence era from the 1960s onwards.

Here is a taste of some of what's on show at the Hakanto Contemporary art space in Antananarivo.

Image source, Ramily

Image source, Ramily

Image source, Ramily

Image source, Ramily

Image source, Ramily

Image source, Ramily

Image source, Ramily

You can listen to the BBC Focus on Africa radio programme on this here.

Chris Hughton wants Ghana to build the "best team possible" ahead of the World Cup, and is keen for members of the diaspora to join the national squad.

Jose Tembe
BBC News

About 3,000 people living on the Island of Mozambique are being transferred to the mainland, as part of reconstruction efforts on the island which was badly hit by a cyclone in March.

"There are households with more than 15 people sharing the same space, and most of these do not have spaces to build latrines and end up resorting to the beaches," a local government spokesman Momade Amisse Ali told the Notícias newspaper.

Many of these people were living the neighbourhood of Macuti, he said, describing their condition as vulnerable.

The Island of Mozambique, which served as a Portuguese trading post, is on the World Heritage List of the UN's cultural organisation, Unesco, because of its "remarkable architectural unity".

Image source, AFP

Richard Hamilton
BBC World Service News

Suspected separatist militants in Cameroon are reported to have killed at least 20 people in an attack on a village near the border with Nigeria.

Local mayor Ekwalle Martin said more than 60 others were injured during Sunday's raid on the village of Obonyi II, in the South-West region.

"The separatists wanted the inhabitants to pay them money each month, they refused, and that's why they [the gunmen] attacked," he told the AFP new agency.

On Tuesday Cameroon's army said it had freed a kidnapped senator and several other hostages.

Elizabeth Regina Mundi was seized last month in the North-West region, where Anglophone separatists have mounted an armed campaign to break away from the mainly French-speaking country.

The International Crisis Group says more than 6,000 people have been killed and more than 700,000 displaced in clashes between militants and security forces since 2017.

You may also be interested in:

• Why separatists in Cameroon and Nigeria have united
• Red Dragons and Tigers - the rebels fighting for independence
• A quick guide to Cameroon

Nichola Mandil
BBC News, Juba

Image source, Canadian Ministry of International Development

Canada will champion efforts to boost food production in South Sudan, its development minister Harjit Singh Sajjan says.

"There is a tremendous potential in this country when it comes to agriculture. There is an opportunity in South Sudan to start feeding not only the region, but the rest of the world... There is a significant economic opportunity," he told the BBC on an official visit to Juba.

This would build on Canada's existing partnership with local farmers, said Mr Singh Sajjan.

Many nations are grappling with a food crisis after the war in Ukraine stopped grain exports.

On top of this, South Sudan is also grapplling with conflict, climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic and the rising cost of living.

According to UN estimates, more than 70% of people face food insecurity in the country.

"I want to make sure that I put attention internationally for South Sudan and see how we can help this country," Mr Singh Sajjan said on Monday.

Wydad Casablanca coach Walid Regragui hails his African Champions League-winning side as "beautiful champions" after they beat Al Ahly in the final.

Results and scorecards from Afghanistan's limited-overs tour of Zimbabwe, featuring three ODIs and three Twenty20 internationals.

Richard Hamilton
BBC World Service News

Image source, Getty Images

The medical charity, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), says one of its staff has been shot dead by a soldier in the Central African Republic.

It said Mahamat Ahamat, who worked as a medicine dispenser, was shot three times at his home by a member of the armed forces on Saturday in Moyenne-Sido - a town around 500km (310 miles) north of the capital, Bangui.

MSF has condemned the attack and called on the authorities to investigate.

The Central African Republic has been plagued by violence and insecurity since a civil war broke out in 2013.

More about the Central African Republic:

• Russian mercenaries accused of CAR atrocities
• Zambian peacekeeper adopts baby from CAR
• Bitcoin becomes official currency in CAR

Nigerian Kunle Adeyanju has finished the treacherous journey from London to Lagos on a motorbike in his campaign to raise awareness and raise funds to end polio in Africa.

He arrived in Lagos on Sunday after covering over 12,000km (7,500 miles) across 14 countries in 40 days.

He told BBC News Pidgin that he was using the journey to give back to society by educating women and children along the route about polio.

Adeyanju said the support he received throughout the journey was beyond his expectation. Many people offered to donate to the cause through the Rotary Club.

He crossed the English channel into France then passed through the Spanish towns of Girona, Valencia and Cartagena before crossing the Mediterranean Sea on a ferry through the Strait of Gibraltar.

He disembarked the ferry in the Moroccan coastal town of Tangier and rode through the capital, Rabat, then to Marrakesh before crossing to Mauritania.

The journey then took him through Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin before arriving in Lagos.

The 44-year-old said passing through the Sahara desert was the most difficult part of the journey. It took him seven days.

"The Sahara desert is not a place where a human being is supposed to be. That place is unfriendly," he said.

It took him a year to prepare and develop a plan for the whole journey, a painstaking process which included identifying hospitals and police stations on the route.

He also had to learn mechanic work so as to repair his motorbike in case of malfunctions on the road.

He had previously cycled from Lagos to Ghana and twice climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania - Africa's highest peak.

BBC Africa Daily podcast

Image source, AFP

Rebel groups and violent conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are fuelled by its vast mineral wealth, and no group has been as prominent as M23.

M23 got its name from a peace deal that was signed by the DR Congo government and a former pro-Tutsi militia on 23 March 2009.

The Tutsi group had long accused the Congolese government of marginalising the country's ethnic Tutsi minority and aimed to fight a DR Congo-based Hutu-majority militia group, called the FDLR (the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda).

This saw DR Congo and Rwanda trading accusations over who was behind which group that has led to bad blood between the two neighbours.

M23 was driven out of DR Congo in 2013, but now its fighters are back. There have been renewed clashes with the Congolese army, and the rebels have taken up strategic positions in North-Kivu province.

The M23 rebels are the children of Kinyarwanda-speaking communities many of whom had moved to Rwanda in the last couple of decades then returned, explains the BBC's Samba Cyuzuzo.

But "they have always been there, because in the era of kingdoms that region was considered part of Rwanda before colonialism came", he says.

So what do M23 fighters want? For Cyuzuzo it comes down to two things - a guarantee of jobs and a guarantee of peace:

1. They want jobs in DR Congo and they want to be enrolled in the army - promised in a recent peace accord.
2. They want the government to fight foreign rebel groups who target DR Congo's Kinyarwanda-speaking Tutsi community so that they can bring back their relatives, who are living in refugee camps in Rwanda and Uganda, to live in safety.

• Click here to listen in full

Image source, Getty Images

The award-winning Nigerian-American writer, who first wrote Black Panther’s T'challa character, has told the BBC’s The Conversation programme that she started writing fiction “late” at the age of 20 during a “very pivotal moment” in her life.

“I was mainly an athlete and I loved the sciences and I loved reading, but that was as far as it went”, Nnedi Okorafor told the BBC’s Kim Chakanetsa.

At the age of 19 Okorafor has spinal surgery for severe scoliosis and was "mysteriously paralysed". Doctors didn’t know if she “would ever walk again”, she recalled.

It was during her stay in hospital that she got what she described as a “spiritual” inspiration to write.

“I was in a lot of pain, I was in shock,” she said. “I had this book, I had a copy of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, and I was in too much pain to read it, and so I just started telling myself this story around the edges of the words.”

Okorafor said visiting Nigeria in her childhood was what inspired her stories: “Those trips had a huge effect on everything, on who I am, how I perceive the world and how I imagine”.

She describes her writing genre as afrofuturism and afrojujuism, which she defines as a “subcategory” of science-fiction rooted in African culture. Meanwhile afrojujuism is a “subcategory” of fantasy and weaves in African spirituality, she said.

She said there is a "long way to go" when it comes to diversity in publishing.

"I remember when my first novel and my second novel came out it was still a controversial, risk-taking thing for publishers to even put a person of colour on the cover, and I remember there being a discussion about that."

Okorafor is a recipient of the World Fantasy, Hugo and Nebula Awards. Her books have strong female leads and draw inspiration from her Nigerian roots. She has written 23 books and seven comics.

• You can listen to her full interview here

Alfred Lasteck
BBC News

Image source, AFP

A minister in the Tanzanian islands of Zanzibar has warned people against insulting or abusing tourists wearing skimpy clothes.

Zanzibar Tourism Minister Simai Mohammed told the BBC that the government would take action on people who offend tourists, who are crucial to the islands’ economy.

He said he would himself advise tourists who are not "decently dressed" to do so “and they would take it positively and correct what is wrong”.

“But this habit of insulting foreigners should be stopped,” he said, noting that the habit had become very common.

“In some areas of Stone Town along Kenyatta Road, the [number of] incidents have been so high. Anyone insulting tourists and telling them ‘go home’ I will deal with it very seriously,” he said.

Tourism is a significant source of income to the semi-autonomous territory and its largest source of foreign exchange.

In 2020, the sector contributed an estimated 28% to the islands' GDP and 82% of its foreign exchange earnings.

Zanzibaris are a mostly conservative and predominantly Muslim society.

Image source, Getty Images

The UK’s new visa scheme for top global graduates, which does not include those from African universities, is “de facto” exclusionary and is “retrograde” and “self-limiting” a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg has told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

The university rankings are “imperfect”, said Prof Lynn Morris, the deputy vice-chancellor of research and innovation at the university.

Alumni of the top non-UK universities who graduated in the past five years will be eligible.

To qualify, a person must have attended an institution that appeared in the top 50 of at least two of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings, or The Academic Ranking of World Universities in the year they graduated.

Thirty-seven universities have made the list - most are in the US, but there are also some in Europe and Asia, none are in Africa.

“The ranking system I think is really not the right way to be choosing the best people,” Prof Morris said, "highlighting that each ranking has different universities on their lists."

She said people from “the global south” approach problems in different ways to the northern hemisphere, and this is something that should be tapped into to encourage “equity and diversity”.

She also highlighted the strengths of South African science when it came to tracking Covid and in “helping the world develop vaccines”.

You can listen to the full interview here.

Despite efforts to eradicate child marriage, the practice still persists in Chad which has one of the highest rates in the world.

Image source, Akem Kelvin Nkwain/Twitter

Cameroonian soldiers have freed a kidnapped senator of the ruling party, plus several other hostages, in an operation in the country's English-speaking North-West region, the army says.

Senator Elizabeth Regina Mundi was kidnapped along with her driver last month in Bamenda.

The separatist group, Ambazonian Defence Forces (ADF), said it carried out the abduction.

The rebel group is one of several fighting for independence in the two main Anglophone regions, the North-West and South-West.

In a statement, army spokesman Cyrille Atonfack Guemo said a dozen separatist fighters were killed, many left injured, while others fled during the Monday night raid.

Related stories:

• Why separatists in Cameroon and Nigeria have united
• Red Dragons and Tigers - the rebels fighting for independence
• Find out more about Cameroon

BBC Monitoring
The world through its media

Image source, AFP

Sudanese authorities have released 125 political prisoners after the country's military leader lifted the state of emergency on Sunday.

They were leaders of the Resistance Committees who opposed the military coup after months of unlawful detention, the private Sudan Tribune website reported, citing a Sudanese lawyers' group.

The activists were released from prisons in the capital Khartoum, Port Sudan and Rabak in the south-east.

Their release came after Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan lifted the state of emergency that he imposed across the country after seizing power in a military coup last October.

The resistance committees - grassroots groups - have been spearheading anti-military protests in the country.

The mass street protests calling for the military to quit politics have been going on regularly for more than seven months since the coup.

The recent measures announced by Gen Burhan are expected to pave the way for face-to-face talks between the junta and the civilian groups.

The UN-led intra-Sudanese indirect talks to end the crisis are underway despite boycotts by key groups hampering the process.

Ashley Lime
BBC News, Nairobi

The Alchemist Bar, a popular club in Nairobi, has announced it will close down for a few days to allow for investigation after a viral video circulated online, external which appeared to allegedly show a black man being turned away from a queue that had white and Asian people.

On Monday, tweeters reacted to the video, calling for an end to alleged racism and discrimination.

But the club denied discriminating against black people.

In a statement on Tuesday, The Alchemist Bar said it had consulted with the Nairobi county government and would "close its doors while a thorough investigation is conducted over the next few days".

The club said it would investigate events on the night of 20 May to determine whether the black man in question was denied entry into the club and whether separate lines for guests was part of policy.

It also wants to establish whether there has been discrimination at the premises by reviewing interviews and footage of past events.

The statement said the Nairobi county government would determine the next steps after the results of the probe.

The club said it would employ a new security team and put in place systems that ensure everyone is welcome.

Samba Cyuzuzo
BBC Great Lakes

Image source, AFP

Rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have retreated from areas they recently captured in clashes with government forces in North Kivu province.

The fighting displaced more than 100,000 people in the province, but local media report that many locals are now returning to their homes in Rutshuru and Nyiragongo areas.

A spokesperson for the M23 rebels, Major Willy Ngoma, has told the BBC that “we have left those areas in order to make peace”.

The rebels had advanced to about 20km (12 miles) from the provincial capital, Goma.

It is not clear where they retreated to, but the UN-sponsored Radio Okapi reports that they went to positions close to the border with Rwanda.

On Monday, government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya had ruled out the possibility of talks with the rebels, terming them "terrorists”.

“What would be the essence of talks with a terrorist group? There’s no more room for talks,” Mr Muyaya said.

But the rebels' spokesperson said the designation of M23 as a terrorist group made no difference.

“Calling us so is meaningless, it is only what they [government] think”, Major Ngoma told the BBC Great Lakes.

The Congolese government in April excluded M23 from negotiations held in Kenya with dozens of rebel groups, accusing the group of staging hostilities just before the talks.

The negotiations have not resulted in any decision yet and are scheduled to resume in Goma town.

Image source, Getty Images

South Africa’s Gauteng health department is investigating the cause of a fire at a hospital in the capital, Pretoria, early on Monday morning.

There were no patients or staff casualties from the fire that affected temporary structures at Steve Biko Hospital, the South African government said in a statement. , external

The fire was later put out.

The government said that 18 patients and one body had to be moved to other areas of the hospital as a safety precaution.

The cause of the fire was unknown and an investigation was under way.

The fire is the third such incident in a hospital since last year.

Nearly 700 patients were evacuated in April last year from Charlotte Maxeke Hospital in Johannesburg following a blaze – prompting the hospital to be closed for a week.

Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema says his government has not been promoting gay rights, the Lusaka Times website reports, quoting his remarks at a church service.

The southern Africa country is a deeply conservative society where homosexual acts are illegal.

The president is reported to have told the congregation that his position on gay rights had not changed since his days in the opposition.

He urged Zambians to "not give attention to things that do not matter".

Zambia's constitution identifies the country as Christian.