Markets and residential areas in the city of Nyala in the Sudan’s Darfur region have turned into battlegrounds in the last few days, staff working for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) say.

"We have also been told that armed fighters have stormed homes and hidden inside, effectively using civilians as human shields and leaving them with no protected spaces," MSF said in a statement, external.

MSF staff are being forced to bury their neighbours, family and friends during a surge in fighting in Nyala, the main city in South Darfur state, where tens of thousands of residents are trapped, the medial charity says.

On Wednesday, shelling caused the death of 27 people, mostly women and children, who were caught in the crossfire while hiding under a bridge, it said.

Elsewhere in South Darfur state, Kas Hospital was now controlled by armed groups, “leaving civilians with little to no options for medical care”, the charity said.

A civil war erupted in Sudan in mid-April between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the army as the two former allies battle for control of the country.

Darfur, the birthplace of the RSF that grew out of the Janjaweed militia accused of widespread atrocities two decades ago, has seen the worst of the violence.

Nduka Orjinmo
BBC News, Abuja

Image source, Getty Images

Three in four Nigerians of working age were employed by the end of March, according to data, external released by the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

This contrasts sharply with the last data, from the end of 2020, which showed that one in three Nigerians that were able to, and actively looking for a job, could not find one.

But what looks like a sharp drop in unemployment is not all that it seems.

The figures were expected to change drastically after the NBS announced that it was revising its methodology to bring it in line with International Labour Organisation (ILO) guidelines.

One of the major changes is that now all those of working age who are engaged in any activity for pay or profit for at least one hour a week are deemed employed. In the past, the benchmark for employment was a minimum of 20 hours work per week

The report showed that 75% of working Nigerians owned their businesses or were engaged in farming, while only 12% were employees as at March.

It is also likely to be contentious as it was carried out before the removal of a decades-long fuel subsidy at the end of May when a new government came into power.

The government has also loosened currency restrictions, which has sent prices of commodities spiking.

Small businesses and low-income earners are among those most badly affected by these changes.

Local media has been reporting on business closures and how people have had to stop working because of high transport fares.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has spoken for the first time about the plane crash in which it is said that Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin died.

He said news of his presumed death came after his return from Africa.

"Only yesterday [Wednesday] returned from Africa. He met certain official persons there," the Russian leader said.

In recent days the Wagner head is believed to have been present in West Africa - where Western analysts fear the group was seeking to widen its reach into other countries, including Niger, where a coup has just taken place.

Wagner is a key pillar of Russian foreign policy, with its forces helping to prop up governments in Syria, Mali, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Libya in exchange for lucrative mining rights.

Priya Sippy
BBC News

The MV Logos Hope, a 132m (433ft) long ship, which has a collection of more than 5,000 books, has officially opened its doors to the public in Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa.

The ship will be open for 45 days for book lovers, who will be able to go on board for a small fee and find thousands of books across different genres.

Visitors can either read books while on the vessel or purchase them to take home.

Mombasa's Education Executive Mbwarali Kame told Kenyan media they were planning to get students from across the six sub-countries to visit the ship.

The MV Logos Hope is the world´s largest floating book fair and is operated by a non-profit organisation in Germany.

It has previously docked in Ghana, as well as Liberia.

The expanding Brics club of nations, seen as a counter to the West, could challenge US dominance.

Image source, Getty Images

A cholera outbreak in Kenya's western county of Migori has killed five people, according to Kenya’s privately owned Daily Nation.

More than 40 more people have been successfully treated of the disease over the past couple of weeks, with eight others currently in hospital, local media report.

Migori's top health official said the outbreak was first reported in the county's gold mines and informal settlements, which have poor sanitation facilities.

Nicolas Négoce
BBC News

Image source, AFP

The presumed death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash in Russia has prompted no official reactions from countries where his mercenaries are known to operate.

Officials at the interim National Assembly in Mali have taken the junta’s line - denying the country has any involvement with Wagner - telling the BBC: "We have no links with this person. We do not know him personally. We have nothing to say about this”.

An official at Burkina Faso’s information ministry also denied any links with the Wagner boss.

While Guinean officials say they are not in the capacity to talk about the incident and are awaiting more details.

Officials in Central African Republic (CAR), where the mercenary outfit has worked since 2018, say they have little information and still doubt Prigozhin was on the plane that crashed near Moscow on Wednesday.

Earlier this week, Prigozhin appeared a video that was posted on Telegram, suggesting he was in Africa when it was recorded.

He said new Wagner fighters were being recruited for deployment to Africa so his group could make the continent “more free”.

Wagner has several thousand troops in at least five African countries – and has been accused of involvement in massacres in Mali as well as atrocities in CAR.

Police confirm 41 people have been detained for allegedly trying to disrupt the voting process.

Image source, Getty Images

Kenya’s competition regulator has fined nine steel companies a record amount for price fixing.

The fines comes to a total of 338m Kenyan shillings ($2.3m, £1.8m) - with Corrugated Steel getting the largest penalty of 86.9m Kenyan shillings.

The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) said in a statement, external that their investigation began three years ago.

It says the firms conspired to inflate the prices of steel products and collectively agreed on price adjustment timelines.

The regulator also penalised eight of the companies for colluding to limit imports of some steel products in order to create artificial shortages and raise prices.

“This penalty is the highest-ever imposed by the authority and it should send a clear message that cartel conduct is illegal under the competition act,” said Adano Wario, the authority’s acting director-general.

Mr Wario added that the fines were proportionate to the harm that the companies caused consumers as their practices had notably increased construction costs.

The authority also revealed that it was negotiating settlements with five other steel companies that had also engaged in anti-competitive behaviour.

Kalkidan Yibeltal
BBC News, Addis Ababa

Image source, Getty Images

Ethiopia is hailing the country’s invitation to join the Brics club of nations as a major diplomatic victory.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who was attending the Brics summit in South Africa, called the decision “a great moment for Ethiopia”.

It is one of two African countries (Egypt is the other) that will become a member come January. In total six nations were invited, the other four were Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Argentina and Iran.

It is not clear whether any deals were made in order for them to join the bloc, which is currently made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and aims to challenge perceived Western dominance in world affairs.

“History is made,” Redwan Hussien, Mr Abiy’s security adviser, wrote on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter.

There is hope among some commentators that the move could improve investor perceptions about Ethiopia.

Its image has been tarnished by the brutal two-year civil war in its northern Tigray region. It ended last November, but there are also recurrent conflicts in other areas.

Previously a strong US ally in the war on terror across the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia’s relations with the West have deteriorated as accusations of grave rights abuses emerged during the Tigray conflict.

Aid and economic support from the West, on which Addis Ababa depended heavily, has decreased as a consequence.

It appears there is hope that Brics membership will strengthen Ethiopia’s position, meaning the West might downplay such accusations in future.

Joining the club, some say, might also give Ethiopia a better footing when it comes to negotiating loans and financial aid as the West might fear the country’s increasingly alignment with China.

Addis Ababa has been one of the largest recipients of economic support from China in the past decade as it was one of Africa’s fastest growing economies. The civil war however has slowed the growth and left the country’s economy in difficulties.

Jose Tembe
BBC News, Maputo

Mozambican doctors and other health workers have suspended a strike that has been going on for more than a month and paralysed public health services.

It comes hours after President Filipe Nyusi appealed to the health professionals to resume work to safeguard the health of Mozambicans.

He said the strike had caused a lot of suffering and contributed to a reduction in productivity.

The chairman of the country’s medical association, Milton Tatia, said the creation of a new negotiations team, led by Prime Minister Adriano Maleiane, had made them decide to return to work.

However, he said they would resume the strike in October if there is no progress in the negotiations.

The health workers have been demanding better wages and working conditions.

They have also raised concerns about inadequate food for patients, lack of medicine and equipment in some hospitals.

The strike, which began on 10 July, involved more than 2,000 health professionals from across the country.

The Igbo community wants the First Daughter title to become an annual tradition that supports young women.

A ban, due to come into effect in Somalia on Thursday, could leave some creators without an income.

Nduka Orjinmo
BBC News, Abuja

Rescue efforts are ongoing in the Nigerian capital after a two-storey building collapsed overnight.

Emergency services say they have pulled 35 people alive out of the rubble in the Garki part of Abuja.

Two others were found dead.

Abba Idris, the head of the Abuja Emergency Relief Agency, told the BBC that those rescued had been taken to hospital.

The building was used for residential and commercial purposes, local media report, and it was not immediately clear what caused the collapse.

There were heavy rains overnight, accompanied by strong winds, which continued till dawn on Thursday.

Garki is in the heart of Abuja and many of its buildings were part of those first constructed in the new city, which began being built in the early 1980s.

Shingai Nyoka
BBC News, Harare

Image source, Getty Images

Police in Zimbabwe have confirmed the arrest of 39 election monitors for allegedly trying to disrupt the voting process.

Officers carried out a series of raids across the capital, Harare, including at a hotel and at offices of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network and the Elections Support Centre.

The civil society groups were co-ordinating an independent count of election results.

The police spokesman Paul Nyathi told state TV that computers and phones had been seized.

Earlier lawyers said they had received disturbing distress calls from those being detained.

They said they initially did not know where the police had taken their clients and that they were being denied access to them.

Opposition parties have disputed past election results.

This year various civil society groups have tried to organise their own vote count in order to compare results with the official tally.

Counting has begun after Wednesday's vote although polling is still taking place in wards in three provinces because of delays.

The mother of Botswana's Letsile Tebogo reflects on their special bond and scoring World Championship success for Africa.

Image source, Getty Images

TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew has held a virtual meeting with Kenya’s president and agreed the popular video-sharing app will monitor content in the East African nation.

The deal comes a week after Kenyan MPs discussed a proposal to ban TikTok because of its explicit sexual content and clips promoting violence and hate speech.

It was also agreed that TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, would set up an office in Kenya.

Kenyan President William Ruto said TikTok's operations in the region would be co-ordinated from there.

He said the moderation agreement would be a step to ensuring TikTok’s content adhered to Kenyan guidelines and standards like other platforms such as YouTube and Twitter, now known as X, did.

The president said the government wanted to reduce the negative side of social media while enabling Kenya to benefit from money that can be made on various platforms.

The country generated between 300m Kenyan shillings ($2m, £1.6m) and 500m Kenyan shillings monthly from social media, he said - without specifying if these were figures for total earnings or tax revenue.

Beverly Ochieng
BBC Monitoring

Image source, Getty Images

The death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, if confirmed, will test the resilience of operations by thousands of mercenaries active in Mali, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Libya.

Wagner has a decentralised command on the continent where it provides security for some African leaders in exchange for mineral and other strategic economic and military concessions.

The group has also been instrumental in spreading Russian influence through media campaigns that primarily discredit the West.

In the CAR, where Wagner forces were invited by President Faustin-Archange Touadéra in 2018, the mercenaries have expanded into the media, timber and even vodka to consolidate economic interests in the mineral-rich country.

Earlier this week, the Russia House, a cultural centre affiliated with Wagner based in CAR’s capital, Bangui, announced a three-month trade fair for Russian businesses interested in expanding operations in the region.

This could ostensibly enable companies linked to Wagner to operate in the CAR and circumvent Western sanctions.

However, the mercenaries operating in CAR have been accused of atrocities while fighting rebels behind the country’s chronic instability.

Mali’s military-led government has also become heavily dependent on Wagner after ending security agreements with France and the UN peacekeeping force.

At least 1,000 mercenaries were deployed there in late 2021, though officials deny their presence.

In May, the US sanctioned Wagner's de facto leader there, Ivan Maslov, for using Mali to obtain weapons for Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine, external.

The range of operations underscore Africa’s importance to Russia’s foreign policy.

However, the loyalty of Wagner operatives on the continent will be crucial in consolidating Moscow’s future influence.

More on this story:

• LISTEN: Beverly Ochieng answers questions about the Wagner group on the BBC World Service podcast What in the World

Putin bids to prop up Russian ambitions in Africapublished at 11:25 British Summer Time 24 August 2023

11:25 BST 24 August 2023

Paul Kirby
Europe digital editor

In Putin's second video contribution to the Brics summit, his big focus was on Africa, going back to his mantra that Russia helps Africa's neediest countries, while the West merely pumps resources out of them in some kind of modern form of revamped colonialism.

He reminded his audience of Russia's offer of 25-50,000 tonnes of free grain supplies to six African nations, including Mali, Zimbabwe and Central African Republic.

It's all part of a bid to prop up Russian ambitions on the continent, when the war in Ukraine is pushing African leaders away. Only 17 African heads of state took part in last month's Russia-Africa summit, down from 43 only four years before.

But another key element of Putin's Africa policy is the thousands of Wagner mercenaries embedded in a number of African states. Wagner is widely accused of plundering those countries for their mineral wealth, so it is a bit rich to complain of Western colonialism.

Image source, AFP

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has praised his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa for his handling of the Brics summit that is ending with a decision to expand the bloc by six countries.

The group is currently made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which has been hosting the annual gathering, and there had been some disagreement about the move to increase its membership.

Mr Putin did not attend the Johannesburg summit in person because he is subject to an international arrest warrant, but he addressed the leaders by videolink.

“I must note that, as it turned out, this work was not easy, and President Ramaphosa showed amazing diplomatic skills in agreeing on all positions, including those related to the expansion of the Brics,” the Reuters news agency quotes him as saying.

“Our Brazilian colleague, President Lula da Silva, has just mentioned some of the most important points for all of us, among which I would, of course, single out the issues of a single accounting currency."

He also expressed Russia’s wish to deepen ties with Africa, though he made no mention of the reported death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss of the Wagner mercenary group that has a presence in several countries on the continent.

To nations joining next year - Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - he said: “We will continue the work that we have started today - to expand the influence of Brics in the world."