Shingai Nyoka
BBC News, Harare

Image source, AFP

The African Development Bank says the outcome of Zimbabwe's upcoming presidential election and the issue of compensating white farmers are key factors in efforts to restructure its crippling debt.

The bank head, Akinwumi Adesina, is directing efforts to help Zimbabwe pay off debt of more than $8bn (£6.4bn) to foreign countries.

Zimbabwe has turned to the African bank to help paying billions of dollars in compensation to the white farmers, who had their land seized by the previous government of Robert Mugabe from 2000.

Zimbabwe is seeking to raise $3.5bn to pay for improvements to machinery and buildings on farms - the government have refused to compensate for the land itself.

The country has over $14bn of external debt and has not received funding from lenders, including the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for more than 20 years as a result.

Image source, Getty Images

A Tunisian court has sentenced opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi to a year in prison.

The Ennahda party leader, who is a fierce critic of President Kais Saied, has been detained since last month after being arrested for allegedly plotting against state security and incitement.

Mr Ghannouchi rejected the allegations as politically motivated, refusing to appear before the judges. On Monday, he was sentenced in absentia.

There has been a wave of arrests this year of leading figures opposed to Mr Saied, who assumed full executive powers almost two years ago.

Since February, 20 of Mr Saied's political opponents and personalities have been arrested, including former ministers and business figures.

Mr Ghannouchi’s detention last month alongside other sparked international condemnation, including by the US, the European Union and rights groups.

Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt carried out 90% of the 883 recorded in 2022, Amnesty International says.

Image source, Getty Images

A police officer was killed during clashes between Senegalese security forces and supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko in the southern town of Ziguinchor, authorities said.

The clashes occurred on Monday near Mr Sonko's home, where he has been staying while vowing to defy any summons to appear in court for a rape trial.

Supporters have surrounded his home since last week, fearing police would move to arrest him and bring him to court.

A statement from the Senegalese interior ministry said the police officer was “accidentally hit by a vehicle”, during the Monday violence.

Reports say security has been tightened in the capital Dakar ahead of the resumption of Mr Sonko's rape trial on Tuesday. He was charged based on a woman's accusations that he assaulted her when she worked at a massage salon two years ago.

Mr Sonko and his allies deny the charges and say they are a ploy to bar him from contesting the 2024 presidential election.

He was handed a six-month suspended sentence on 8 May for defaming Tourism Minister Mame Mbaye Niang in a review of the initial two-month term.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

Comoros says it will resume accepting its nationals who are deported from the neighbouring French island of Mayotte as long as they are returning voluntarily.

In recent weeks tension between the two Indian Ocean countries has been high after Paris started deporting undocumented migrants from Mayotte.

Around half of the 350,000-strong population is estimated to be foreign, most of them Comorian.

The Comorian government, which claims Mayotte is part of its territory, initially refused to take in the deportees.

Thomas Naadi
BBC News, Accra

Image source, Hajia4reall/Instagram

Influential Ghanaian musician and socialite Mona Faiz Montrage, popularly known as Hajia4Real, has been extradited to the US and charged with a $2m ($1.6m) romance scam.

The criminal enterprise she allegedly belonged to targeted lonely American men and women - and in one instance faked married to one victim to further her scheme.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in a statement indicated she had been charged with several counts, including conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering.

She could receive a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail for each count if found guilty.

She was also charged with conspiracy to receive and the receipt of stolen money, which carry maximum sentences of five and 10 years respectively.

The 30-year-old was arrested on 10 November last year in the UK then extradited to the US on Friday.

She pleaded not guilty to all charges when she appeared before a judge on Monday.

US authorities have expressed concern about romance scams targeting older people and expressed the need to hold perpetrators to account.

Montrage is alleged to have been part of a criminal enterprise in West Africa that defrauded companies and individuals, including romance scams in the US between 2013 and 2019.

BBC Monitoring
The world through its media

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Sudan's military leader Lt Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has sacked the acting interior minister, Anan Hamed Mohammed Omar, who is also the police chief.

In a statement, Gen Burhan named Khalid Hassan Muhyi al-Din as the new general director of police.

No reason was given for the sacking but Gen Burhan had earlier dismissed, in similar decrees, the governor of the central bank and two foreign ministry diplomats.

The police have been inactive in conflict-hit areas, including the capital, Khartoum, since the fighting erupted on 15 April. As a result, acts of lawlessness, including looting and robbery, have been widely reported in these areas.

A month of fighting between Sudan's rival military factions appears to have no end in sight despite much-touted truce talks brokered by the US and Saudi Arabia.

Image source, Malawi Broadcasting Corporation/Facebook

At least 20 people are missing in Malawi after a canoe they were sailing in was hit by a hippo and capsized on the Shire River in the southern Nsanje region.

Robert Nayeja, a senior official in Nsanje District, said the canoe was carrying about 37 people going to their fields on the Mozambican side, state-owned MBC TV reported.

A body of an infant, who was among the passengers, has been retrieved.

Agnes Zalakoma, a senior police officer, has told the VOA that the death toll is expected to rise as detectives and rescue teams search for the missing people. So far, 13 people have been rescued.

A lawmaker for the area said the river was infested with crocodiles and hippos and the boats operating there were not motorboats.

The boat mishap is the third deadly accident on the river in three years.

Malawi is recovering from a devastating tropical storm in March that killed 511 people and left 533 others missing.

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A BBC investigation has found significant discrepancies in the election results in one region of the country.

That's all from the BBC Africa Live team for now. We'll be back on Wednesday morning with the latest news and views from around the continent.

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We leave you with a photo of Rungano Nyoni, a Zambian film director who is a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in France:

Image source, AFP

Priya Sippy
BBC Focus on Africa radio

Image source, Getty Images

As Turkey is set to hold a run-off vote between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu - what might the outcome mean for Africa?

Sami Hamdi, a risk analyst and editor in chief of The International Interest current affairs magazine, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa radio programme that Africa could fall down the priority list of Turkey, if Mr Erdogan did not win.

“Kilicdaroglu has made it abundantly clear that he wishes to repeat the process of bringing Turkey closer to Europe. The Africa-Turkey relationship is heavily dependent on Erdogan,” he said.

Priya Sippy
BBC Focus on Africa radio

Nigerian-born Jeffery Kenny, who represented Ukraine in the Eurovision song contest alongside Ukrainian producer Andrii Hutsuliak, has told the BBC’s Focus on Africa radio programme that they were happy with their result in the competition.

The music duo, Tvorchi, came in sixth place with their song ‘Heart of Steel' in the contest held on Saturday in the city of Liverpool in the UK.

Kenny, who moved to Ukraine in 2013 for university, believes that Tvorchi were selected for Eurovision as people "wanted something different to represent Ukraine".

He added that his Nigerian background continues to influence his music.

“The way I compose the melodies comes from my background and my history of what I have been listening to. I put all of that into the music I make, which is electronic music".

"Our new album that we are working on will have some Afrobeats in there," Kenny said.

He spoke to Focus on Africa's Karnie Sharp, who started off by asking him how he ended up in Ukraine:

Hilda Baci has cooked over 100 different dishes since turning on her cooker at 15:00 GMT on Thursday.

Senior military officers from South Africa and Russia have agreed to boost cooperation, and increase the combat readiness of their armies, in talks held in Moscow, Russia's defence ministry has been quoted as saying by the state-owned Tass news agency.

The high-level talks come days after the US ambassador to Pretoria, Reuben Brigety, accused South Africa of supplying arms and ammunition to Russia, despite its professed neutrality in the Ukraine war.

The commander of South Africa's land forces, Lieutenant General Lawrence Mbatha, led the talks with his Russian counterpart, Oleg Salyukov, in Moscow, Tass reports.

"The sides discussed issues of military cooperation, and the implementation of projects geared to enhance the combat readiness of the two countries’ armies.

"The meeting between the military commanders yielded agreements on the further expansion of cooperation between the land forces in various areas," the ministry is quoted as saying.

Last week, South Africa found itself at the centre of a diplomatic storm with the US after Mr Brigety said he was confident that arms and ammunition were loaded on a Russian ship at a naval base in Cape Town in December.

South Africa said it had no record of an arms sale, but President Cyril Ramaphosa has ordered an inquiry to investigate the allegations.

In his weekly newsletter published on Monday, Mr Ramaphosa said South Africa was under "extraordinary pressure" to take sides in the Ukraine war, but it would not do so in what was "in effect a contest between Russia and the West".

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) confirmed that senior military officers were currently in Moscow.

"It must be noted that South Africa has military-to-military bilateral relations with various countries in the continent and beyond," the SANDF said in a statement, adding that the trip to Russia was planned well in advance.

The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) said the visit was the latest example of the South African government "unashamedly" showing its support for Russia.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

Sudan's army has attacked the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) around a hospital in the north of the capital, Khartoum.

Video footage , externalshows the building was badly damaged by the air strikes.

Overnight Somalia's embassy in Khartoum was ransacked and looted by RSF fighters.

They have taken over many homes in the city and there have been reports of assaults on civilians, including rapes.

In a voice message the RSF leader, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo - who's better known as Hemedti - vowed to keep fighting.

He said Sudan's military leader, General al-Burhan, would be captured, given a fair trial and then hanged in a public square.

Image source, Getty Images

South Africa's Pieter Malan will have a scan on his knee after limping out of Middlesex's defeat at Surrey.

Former national team captain Lucas Radebe wants former players involved in the 'politics' needed to turn around the fortunes of South African football.

Bushra Mohamed
BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

Turkey’s election is trending on social media in Somalia, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enjoys popular backing because of the support he has given to the country.

More than 10 years ago when he was still Turkey's prime minister, he became the most senior non-African leader to visit Somalia - and won the hearts of millions when he visited a camp for displaced people.

At that time, Somalia was facing a severe drought, and Mr Erdogan's visit brought Somalia to the attention of the world.

Under his rule, Turkey’s government built one of the biggest hospitals in the capital, Mogadishu, which was named after him.

Turkey has also built a military base in Mogadishu, and is involved in the training of more than 20,000 Somali special forces.

"’We stand with Erdogan as he stood with Somalia during the difficult time. Praying and hoping for his victory,’’ Adam Hassan Salamiin, external said in a Facebook post, which summed up the views of many people.

Somalia has been hit by instability since the fall of long-serving ruler Siad Barre in 1991, and is currently battling an insurgency by militant Islamists.

Mr Erdogan will go head-to-head with his opposition rival in a run-off vote. Mr Erdogan led the first round with 49.51% of the vote, official results show.

Although he had a clear lead over his main challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who polled 44.88%, he needed more than half the vote to win the race outright.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki, who's on a rare visit out of his country, has met China's President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang in Beijing.

Mr Isaias laid a wreath at the Monument to People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square, which remembers all those who died in the struggle to build a modern China.

In 1989 Tiananmen Square became the focus for large-scale protests for greater political freedom.

The protests were crushed by the Chinese authorities.

Mr Isaias praised what he called China's contributions to transform the world order.

Eritrea is one of the world's most oppressive states.

It's frequently criticised by the West for its human rights record, but is geopolitically important for China.

China has a military base in neighbouring Djibouti and is seeking to increase its influence across the fragile Horn Of Africa region.

Image source, Getty Images