Hanna Temauri
BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

Only 3% of school leavers in Ethiopia have won good enough grades to go to university, says Education Minister Berhanu Nega, who has called these latest exam results "shocking".

No exams took place in the war-torn region of Tigray, where the federal government has not provided education for two years.

There was also controversy over the timing of the final exams for students living in areas which were heavily impacted by the civil war in the north of the country, including in Amhara where 12,000 students reportedly staged a walk-out.

Cheating and fraud have marred previous exams in Ethiopia, so this time they were held under strict supervision in universities across the country last October.

A new procedure will be put in place to get more students into universities with re-examinations in subjects with lower scores, Mr Berhanu said.

A media officer for the Confederation of African Football who has been suspended for "indecent conduct" denies wrongdoing.

Freshly-appointed Lone Stars boss Ansu Keita says "I am not God" as he takes on his new job.

Guy Bandolo
BBC News

At least 20 people have died and seven are injured after bus crashed into a broken-down lorry in Chad on Thursday night, authorities say.

It happened on a road between Abéché and Oum-Hadjer in the east of the country.

According to Chad's Transport Minister, Fatimé Goukouni Weddeye, the bus was carrying 31 passengers. She says the accident was caused by driver failures to comply with road safety rules - including speeding, overloading, fatigue and recklessness.

Transitional President Mahamat Idriss Déby expressed his condolences to the victims' families and promised measures to reduce car accidents in Chad.

The relentless storm continues to bring heavy rain and strong winds to the island, creating dangerous mudslides and flash flooding.

Jacobs Odongo Seaman

Image source, JACOBS ODONGO SEAMAN

Arsenal fans who were freed after arrest for celebrating the club's win against Manchester United have appealed to Rwandan President Paul Kagame to help them travel to London to watch a home match at the Emirates Stadium.

Felix Bagiire, a radio presenter, said Mr Kagame was a renowned Arsenal fan who they admire.

Making the request to Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni would “politicise everything”, he added.

“Man United fans talked a lot before the match, they even went to church hours before the match, and [ex-Manchester United player] Gary Neville has been trashing our team’s chances so beating them made us very happy,” Mr Bagiire said.

Seven of those arrested were released after a night in custody where police interrogated them for any links to opposition politics.

Police said the one who remains in custody had been linked him to a previous incident of theft.

Upon their release on Tuesday, the group was invited to the capital, Kampala, where they met police spokesperson Fred Enanga, external. They also met Asan Kasingye, the chairman of Arsenal fans in Uganda.

Arsenal scored a dramatic last-minute goal to win 3-2 in Sunday’s match against fierce rivals Manchester United.

The fans believe Mikel Arteta has instilled enough confidence in the team to battle for the premier league title.

Mr Bagiire said they will mobilise 10,000 fans in May to celebrate Arsenal’s victory - which they are sure is on the cards.

“I started supporting Arsenal when Thierry Henry was playing and I’ve never seen them lift the trophy,” he said. “This is our chance.”

Kevin Keane
BBC News

The president of Malawi has called for more studies into the link between cholera and climate change after the country was hit by record deaths.

President Lazarus Chakwera told the BBC he did not doubt the link but wanted to be led by more research.

About 1,000 people are reported to have died in the current outbreak.

Mr Chakwera said there had been an unprecedented level of water-borne diseases since devastating floods last year which affected much of southern Malawi:

BBC Monitoring
The world through its media

Image source, Getty Images

Equatorial Guinea's vice-president has accused French telecom operator Orange SA of "fraudulently" giving the .gq domain name to the Netherlands, forcing the African nation's institutions to pay to use the domain.

Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue said Equatorial Guinea had "discovered that the French from the Orange company engaged in fraudulent manipulation by ceding our domain #gq to the Dutch".

"Now, we have to pay them to use our own domain, which makes it challenging to set up an institutional website with gq for the country," he wrote on Twitter , externalon Thursday.

"What have we done to France for it to plunder African countries in this manner? We are once again hindered by their trickery. The West should stop taking advantage of Africa," he added.

Orange SA has not responded to the claims.

The vice-president, son of long-serving President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, has previously accused Spain, France and the US of interfering in his country's internal affairs.

In 2020, a French court fined him 30m euros ($32.9m; £26.6m) for embezzling public funds, giving him a suspended jail term and ordering the confiscation of his assets.

The .gq domain name was launched in 1997 by Equatorial Guinean mobile operator Getesa and is reported to be prone to spam, phishing and other malicious use.

Why politics continues to dominate the African Nations Championship despite a number of exciting stories from the opening rounds.

Asian cheetahs became extinct in India in the 1940s because of excessive hunting and loss of habitat.

Image source, Getty Images

A Ugandan woman who broke up with her fiancé has been ordered to pay him financial damages for psychological anguish.

The court in Kanungu said Richard Tumwine paid 9.4m shillings ($2,550; £2,060) for Fortunate Kyarikunda's law studies, which she must now repay plus his legal fees.

By calling off their engagement after four years, Magistrate Asanasio Mukobi ruled that Ms Kyarikunda had broken a promise to the detriment of Mr Tumwine.

The court said it was "unreasonable, a misrepresentation and a fraud" for the defendant to argue that her parents told her not to marry an older man, saying she "had all the opportunity to reject the plaintiff’s love requests at the earliest point possible and avoid interfering with his financial obligations".

It is not known if Ms Kyarikunda will appeal against the judgement.

Critics tell the Monitor newspaper that the verdict is flawed, external because an engagement, unlike a marriage, is not legally binding.

Meanwhile Sheila Kawamara, of the women's advocacy group ED EASSI, warns there are sometimes exploitative circumstances whereby a man gives money to a woman on the condition that she will marry him.

Image source, Getty Images

Germany's foreign office says it's "sorry" for sending a tweet that caused offence in Africa by using a stereotype about the continent.

The tweet was a dig at Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's tour of Africa, but its reference to African wildlife sparked accusations of insensitivity.

"Lavrov is in Africa, not to see [leopard emoji] but to bluntly claim that Ukraine's partners 'want to destroy everything Russian'," the tweet said.

Many saw it as a generalisation of Africa being no more than a vast landscape of wild animals.

Ebba Kalondo, spokeswoman for the African Union's chair, was among those critical of the tweet.

In its apology, the German foreign office said: "Point taken and sorry. We value our African partners."

"Our tweet was in no way intended to mean offence," it added.

It explained that the leopard emoji was in reference to German-made Leopard tanks approved for combat in Ukraine.

"We wanted to call out the lies that Russia uses to justify its imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine," the foreign office tweeted.

Image source, AFP

A tropical storm followed by heavy rainfall has killed at least 16 people in Madagascar, emergency services say.

Seventeen people remain missing after Tropical Storm Cheneso hit, according to the Office for Risk and Disaster Management.

More than 60,000 people have been displaced since the storm reached the island just over a week ago.

Some 47,000 people are affected, while 13,000 houses and some 100 classrooms are damaged, the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations said

Madagascar, Mozambique and the wider southern Africa region have been hit by severe storms and cyclones in recent years.

Last year, several storms in the region killed more than 100 people and displaced hundreds of thousands others.

Samba Cyuzuzo
BBC Great Lakes

Rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo claim to have taken the key town of Kitshanga after three days of intense clashes with government forces.

The UN-sponsored local radio Okapi was among the first to report the fall of Kitshanga to the rebels.

Images of hundreds of people fleeing the town have also been shared on social media.

“Yes we now have Kitshanga and its neighbourhoods,” Willy Ngoma, a spokesman of the M23 rebels, told the BBC on Friday.

The BBC has approached the military for a response.

Local civil society groups and the UN forces in the country have condemned M23 military offensives which have forced more than 400,000 people to flee their homes.

Congolese Senator Francine Muyumba has called on parliament to hold an extra-ordinary session because “the country is doing very badly”, she said on Twitter., external

A summit held in November in neighbouring Angola had asked the M23 rebels to cease hostilities and withdraw from areas it had captured.

But the rebels said they find themselves “obliged to intervene to stop another genocide” against ethnic Tutsis living in DR Congo, according to a statement on Thursday evening.

Kitshanga town lies in a strategic route between the region's economic hubs of Goma and Butembo.

For some years, the town was the stronghold and the headquarters of the infamous rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and his CNDP rebel group, which later became M23.

BBC Monitoring
The world through its media

Image source, Office of the PM - Ethiopia/Twitter

Sudan's military leader says "Sudan and Ethiopia are in agreement on all matters regarding" the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd), state-run news agency Suna has reported.

Speaking when he met visiting Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Khartoum on Thursday, Lt Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan stressed the need to strengthen bilateral relations between Sudan and Ethiopia.

Mr Abiy said that the Nile dam would "not harm Sudan's interests but rather will benefit Khartoum in the electricity sector".

On 11 January, Sudanese and Egyptian foreign ministers agreed to "continue consultations" regarding the Ethiopian dam.

Addis Ababa, Khartoum and Egypt have been embroiled in a long dispute over the dam, which Sudan and Cairo fear would reduce their shares of water from the River Nile.

Alfred Lasteck
BBC News, Dar es Salaam

The body of a Tanzanian national who was killed in Ukraine fighting with Russian forces returned to his home country on Friday.

Nemes Tarimo, 37, died three months ago after agreeing to sign up with the Russian mercenary group Wagner.

His body was received by his family at the main airport in Dar es Salaam with burial scheduled for Saturday in his home village in the southern highlands of country.

Mr Tarimo had been in Moscow as a business informatics master's student at the Russian Technological University. But he was then imprisoned some time after January 2021 for what were described as drugs-related offences.

Last year, he was enticed with a deal: sign up with the Russian mercenary group Wagner and be pardoned or stay in prison.

More on the story:

• Tanzanian killed in Ukraine: We told him not to go

Teklemariam Bekit
BBC News Tigrinya

Image source, MFA RUSSIA/TWITTER

Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday held discussions on bilateral relations and the Ukraine conflict.

Regarding the war in Ukraine, the Eritrean president said "the illusion to generate a global uni-polar system has totally failed".

He called for "an integrated effort to resist and combat the hegemonic and colonial history that had put the world into jeopardy".

Eritrean Minister of Information, Yemane Gebremeskel, said the talks were on the "the dynamics of the war in Ukraine" and enhancement of ties between the two countries.

"The discussions centred on the dynamics of the war in Ukraine and enhancement of bilateral ties on sectors of energy, mining, information technology, education and health," Mr Yemane posted on Twitter, external.

Eritrea was the only African country to vote against a UN resolution in March 2022 condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Lavrov arrived in Eritrea on the last leg of a second Africa tour in six months that also took him to Angola, South Africa and Eswatini.

Image source, Getty Images

Kenya's deputy president has ordered government administrators in the country's central region to enforce a one-pub-per-town directive that was issued last week.

Rigathi Gachagua also wants entertainment joints in the region to only operate between 17:00 to 23:00 in new measures meant to deal with alcoholism.

There are fears the directives could see many resort to homemade alcohol - often laced with industrial chemicals. Deaths from illicit brews have previously been reported.

But Mr Gachagua on Thursday insisted that alcoholism in the region was dire and told officials not to renew pub licences once they expire.

"Let us deal with these issues, let us save the next generation, otherwise we have a problem as society," he said.

BBC World Service

Image source, Getty Images

South Africa says it has signed an agreement to introduce dozens of African cheetahs to India over the next decade.

The South African environment department said the first batch of 12 cheetahs would be moved next month.

It plans to send a similar number annually for the next eight to 10 years.

India received eight cheetahs from Namibia last year and they were released at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh state.

Asian cheetahs became extinct in India in the late 1940s because of excessive hunting and loss of habitat.

Some conservationists argue that the translocation of cheetahs may not be successful as reserves in India are close to densely populated villages.

Tom Bayly
BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

The United States says its special forces have killed a senior figure in the Islamic State group in Somalia, along with 10 of his associates.

Bilal al-Sudani is alleged to have been a key figure in the funding and expansion of the Islamist militant group across Africa and beyond.

Officials say he was killed during a gunfight after troops raided a remote mountainous cave complex in northern Somalia, hoping to capture him.

In a statement the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said no civilians were harmed in what he described as "a successful counterterrorism operation.”

Analysts say the fact that troops were sent to kill or capture Mr Sudani, rather than using a less risky drone strike, indicates his significance.