Hanna Temauri
BBC News, Addis Ababa

Authorities in Ethiopia say they have detained 47 people - including journalists, activists and campaigners - for "executing a terrorist act" and attempting to overthrow the government in the northern regional state of Amhara.

The arrests come days after a senior official of Ethiopia's ruling Prosperity Party and his bodyguards were shot dead there. The alleged culprits, who were identified by Ethiopian security and intelligence agents, had already been jailed before the killings.

In its statement on Sunday, Ethiopia's federal joint task force disclosed the name of 11 more wanted suspects - including prominent politicians and journalists who are based inside and outside the country.

The federal government said it had to take "decisive measures" against "extremist forces" in the region - triggering fears that it could lead to yet another round of violence.

The killing of the Prosperity Party official came weeks after the federal government announced the dissolution of a paramilitary force which had prompted widespread protests and violence in the Amhara region.

Multiple individuals who were accused of plotting to kill senior government officials in four major cities, including the capital Addis Ababa, were also arrested at the beginning of last month.

The BBC's chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet reports from Port Sudan as thousands flee.

Tunisia in North Africa was the birthplace of the Arab Spring, a wave of popular uprisings that shook or toppled authoritarian regimes in the region. But, after a decade of fragile democracy, in 2019 a new strongman, President Kais Saied, swept to power. He directed his campaign at young Tunisians, promising an end to corruption.

There was optimism but the Covid pandemic had battered the economy and exposed - as it did in many other countries - the weaknesses of the health system. Mr Saied insisted Tunisia's democratic system was not working so he used emergency powers to sack the prime minister, close the National Assembly and suspend the constitution - essentially paving the way to rule by decree.

Last week one of Tunisia’s most prominent opposition leaders, Rached Ghannouchi, who is also the leader of Tunisia’s largest political party, was imprisoned. He's the latest in a long line of critics jailed by the president. So, is this the final nail in the coffin for Tunisia’s fledgling democracy? What is President’s Saied’s vision? And what, if anything, can the world do to prevent the Arab Spring's one success story joining its long list of failures?

Shaun Ley is joined by:

Nadia Marzouki, a political scientist and tenured researcher at Sciences Po in Paris

Ghazi Ben Ahmed, a Tunisian economist and the founder of the Brussels-based think-tank Mediterranean Development Initiative

Monica Marks, assistant professor of Middle East politics at New York University in Abu Dhabi

Also featuring:

Yusra Ghannouchi, the daughter of Rached Ghannouchi

Nabil Ammar, the Tunisian Foreign Minister

Elizia Volkmann, journalist in Tunis

Photo: The 67th anniversary of Tunisia's Independence, Tunis - 20 Mar 2023 Credit: MOHAMED MESSARA/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Produced by Pandita Lorenz and Rumella Dasgupta

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in fierce fighting between army troops and paramilitary forces in Sudan this week. The fighting that has erupted in the capital Khartoum and elsewhere in the country is a direct result of a vicious power struggle within the country's military leadership. Aid agencies say it's nearly impossible to provide humanitarian assistance to people and the health system is close to collapse.

So what's led to this crisis? Who controls the country at the moment? And who are the key international players who can exert influence?

Shaun Ley is joined by :

Dame Rosalind Marsden, associate fellow at the Chatham House International Affairs think tank in London, a former EU Special Representative for Sudan and South Sudan and also Britain's former Ambassador to Sudan.

Murithi Mutiga, project director, Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group.

Mohanad Hashim, BBC journalist and expert on Sudan

Also featuring :

Cameron Hudson, director of the US State Department's Africa Bureau in George W. Bush's administration. He also served as chief of staff to successive presidential envoys during the Darfur insurgency and the secession of what become South Sudan in 2011.

Tagreed Abdin, an architect who lives with her family in Khartoum.

James Copnall, BBC's correspondent in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum from 2009-2012.

Producers : Rumella Dasgupta and Ellen Otzen

Imagine a place where poets lead armies into battle and strike fear into politicians, where poems accompany birth and marriage, work and worship, where the greatest poets write lyrics to pop songs and are treated like celebrities.

For Somalis, in the Somali territories and beyond, this is a cultural reality - a world were the rhythms and images of poetry are built into everyday speech and learnt from birth, where poetry is simply the natural language.

Acclaimed British Somali poet Warsan Shire explores what it means to be part of a culture which puts poetry at its centre, a “nation of poets”, and asks where this thriving tradition is going next. As a new Somali generation comes of age in a diaspora spread across the world, how are traditions adapting to new contexts and how is technology helping poetry thrive in a hyper-connected community?

Sharing their insights, memories and poetry with Warsan are British Somali poets Momtaza Mehri and Samatar Elmi, academics Dr Christina Woolner and Dr Martin Orwin and famous Somali poet Xasan Daahir Ismaaciil known to his many fans and followers as 'Weedhsame’.

Presented by Warsan Shire Produced by Michael Umney A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4

Picture credit: Leyle Jeyte

The generals fear they are at risk if civilian rule demands accountability, argues Alex de Waal.

Promises to end the devastating wars in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile come with a price tag.

A joyful, beautiful, pain filled sound journey through South Africa - from a politically charged soundscape of the murder of striking miners, to the music of a living legend, Madosini, a Xhosa musician.

Singer and musician Nathaniel Mann, recent recipient of a Paul Hamlyn award for composition, travels to the Cape to find an irresistible blend of artists working with sound and music - reflecting both the joys and the pain of this conflicted and deeply unequal society.

Haroon Gunn-Sallie was born in prison - his parents under arrest for their part in the armed struggle against apartheid. Believing he was destined to be ‘an activist', he has channeled his activism into art, finding a surprising home in the mainstream fine art world - including London Frieze. Marikana is one of his most powerful works - an installation marking the anniversary of a massacre of striking miners in 2012. The audience enter a sealed black box, and experience a collage of sounds which take you from the mine shaft through a vivid soundscape of newsreel, loudhailers, demonstrations and bullets to the massacre. Moments later the sound gives way to a beautiful rendition of ‘Senzenina’ - a song asking ‘What have We Done?', reflecting the struggles South Africa has yet to overcome as a fledgling democracy.

Madonsini, a traditional Xhosa musician, is the first person to be recorded for the WOMAD Festival's Musical Elders Archive project, yet her fame remains limited within the world-music sphere, and the instruments she plays are in danger of being lost. "There is no-one playing this instrument now except for me and my friend. I want the instrument to live, not to die with me." Revered for her skills on two unique instruments, the uhadi (bow with calabash) and the umrumbhe (mouth bow), Madosini is also instrument maker, using specific wood she finds lying in the bush near her home. Nathaniel gets a lesson in playing the umrumbhe with mixed results...

Jenna Burchell was driving across the great Karoo - the desert also known as The Cradle of Mankind - when she noticed a white line running along the hillside next to the dusty road. It was a strata left behind after an ‘extinction event’, millennia ago, and so she began exploring the line - walking and gathering beautiful shattered rocks from the site. Using the Japanese technique of Kintsukuroi, repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer, she turned these ancient rocks into ‘Songsmiths’ working with recorded sound, to make the rocks sing of the land where they have existed for millennia triggered in each sculpture by the touch of a human hand. These ‘Songsmiths’ are both a visual and an aural treat - magically singing, as hands clutch stroke or just hover above the surface of each rock.

We also get the chance to listen in on a work in progress created by the artist Sikhumbuzo Makandula, who is fascinated by the sonic web bells cast over the South African landscape. His work explores the way that slave bells became church bells became school bells - in a sonically overwhelming show, asking the audience to join in with ringing a whole host of bells….

A sideways looks at an extraordinary sonic landscape.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

Roger Law, the co-creator of Spitting Image, heads to Cape Town to meet South Africa's satirical puppets. What happens when he meets the rubber version of Nelson Mandela?

In a small studio under Table Mountain a dedicated group of puppeteers are keeping the satirical flame burning for South Africa. With rubber versions of their politicians. old and new, and the backing of one of the country's finest cartoonists Zapiro, they are making waves for the establishment. But how easy is this to do in a democracy that is so new? Comedy can be tricky in a country where race and politics are so highly sensitive.

Roger Law goes on set to talk to the writers and the performers of ZA News, South Africa's puppet show, as well as stand up comedians. He finds out what can - and can't be - said on air and on stage, and what really upsets the country's political elite. A portrait of South Africa through its evolving satirical scene, with a democracy only now finding that perhaps it can laugh at itself.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2013.

Drama based on the novel by Gillian Slovo.

A woman leaves her law career in New York to return to South Africa to assist an old friend as prosecutor on a Truth Commission hearing.

The man she is representing, a social activist, is shocked to discover that the former police deputy who once tortured him is now seeking amnesty for his actions.