Cat Wiener
BBC World Service newsroom

Image source, AFP

The foreign minister of France has reiterated her country's commitment to maintaining troops in Niger and keeping the French ambassador in place.

The military leadership in Niamey demanded the envoy's expulsion more than a week ago.

Catherine Colonna told Le Monde newspaper that the ambassador Sylvain Itte was the French representative to Niger's "legitimate authorities" - the deposed government of President Mohamed Bazoum.

Ms Colonna was speaking as tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Niamey for a third consecutive day near a French military base.

They again called on the former colonial power withdraw its troops.

France has about 1,500 soldiers stationed in Niger to help quell an Islamist insurgency in the Sahel region.

Mike Thomson
BBC World Service newsroom

Image source, Algeria Civil Defence agency/Facebook

Flooding caused by torrential rain has killed eight people in western Algeria.

All were swept away by floodwaters.

The bodies of two women and two men were recovered on Sunday in the Tlemcen area.

Civil defence officials say the victims had been travelling in a vehicle when a river they were passing burst its banks.

Shingai Nyoka
BBC Zimbabwe correspondent

Image source, AFP

Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa is set to be sworn in for a second term in office.

Official results gave him close to 53% of the vote in a presidential election which international observers said fell short of democratic standards.

His Zanu-PF party won close to two-thirds of the parliamentary vote.

Mr Mnangagwa’s main rival Nelson Chamisa has called for fresh elections.

He has until Monday to ask the court to overturn the results.

The red carpet has been rolled out and several heads of state have confirmed that they will attend Mr Mnangagwa’s inauguration.

The government is confident it will go ahead as planned.

But an official told the BBC that if the opposition lodged their court application before the ceremony, it could be called off.

Mr Chamisa's Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has rejected Mr Mnangagwa’s election win as fraudulent - but has not officially confirmed whether it will go to court.

International observers' harsh criticism of his election win is likely to hinder Mr Mnangagwa's plans for greater international re-engagement and an economic turn-around.

But the attendance of some regional leaders is likely to give him a semblance of the legitimacy that he seeks.

Thomas Naadi
BBC News, Libreville

Image source, AFP

The head of the military junta in Gabon, Gen Brice Oligui Nguema, is due to be sworn into office as the interim president of the country.

The army toppled President Ali Bongo on Wednesday shortly after he was declared winner of a disputed election.

Supporters of the military leadership in Gabon are expected to attend the inauguration of Gen Nguema.

The mood in the country is calm but with heightened security.

The coup leader is said to be the cousin of ousted President Ali Bongo, raising doubts about whether this really marks an end to the 55-year-long Bongo era.

Gen Nguema has said he won’t rush to return the country to civilian rule, to avoid past mistakes.

The opposition has warned that the military shows no sign of handing back power.

Gabon is the sixth Francophone country to fall under military rule in the last three years as former colonial power France struggles to maintain its influence on the continent.

Read more:

• Gen Brice Oligui Nguema: Who is Gabon's coup leader?

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French Moroccan author Leïla Slimani won critical acclaim and a reputation as an author of bold & brutal fiction with her first two novels. Adele is about a bourgeoise Parisian wife and mother who lives a sexually promiscuous secret life. In Lullaby, a nanny kills the children she’s employed to care for, a story currently being adapted as a drama series starring Nicole Kidman. Leïla has also written the first two in a planned trilogy of novels based on her own family history, and has published short stories and non-fiction. She has won France’s most prestigious literary award the Prix Goncourt, and in 2017 she was appointed as President Macron’s personal representative to Francophone countries.

For This Cultural Life, Leïla Slimani tells John Wilson about her childhood in Rabat, the daughter of a prominent Moroccan economist and politician. She reveals how she was motivated to write novels after the death of her father who had been convicted of financial fraud and imprisoned, but who was posthumously cleared of any wrongdoing. She chooses her French-born maternal grandmother, who told stories to Leïla , as a formative influence on her creative imagination from a young age. Having covered the Arab Spring uprisings in Morocco and Tunisia as a journalist for Jeune Afrique magazine, Leïla discusses how news stories have inspired much of her work.

Producer: Edwina Pitman

At the end of May 1988, rebels from the Somali National Movement launched a series of lightning attacks on cities in northern Somalia - the area that today is the self-declared republic of Somaliland. The rebels were fighting against the military dictatorship of President Siad Barre.

By the start of June, they had taken control of most of Hargeisa, the biggest city in the north. Government forces fell back to Hargeisa airport and other areas on the outskirts and were ordered to begin the indiscriminate bombardment of the city. At the time Ahmed Mohamed Hassan was a fighter pilot in the Somali air force.

He now faced a choice: join other pilots in bombing the city or refuse and face the prospect of being shot.

He’s been talking to Rob Walker. (Photo: Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in 2023. Credit: Ahmed Mohamed Hassan)

The Malian photographer, Malick Sidibé, is one of Africa’s most celebrated artists.

His most famous photographs show black and white scenes of young people partying in the capital Bamako in the joyful, confident era after Mali’s independence from France in 1960.

In the 1990s, a chance encounter with a French curator brought Sidibé’s work international acclaim.

The wider world had been used to seeing a narrow range of images from Africa, so when Sidibé’s work went on show in Western galleries, audiences were stunned by the exuberant world they revealed.

In 2022, Manthia Diawara, the Malian filmmaker and professor at New York University, who knew Malick when he was a roving nightlife photographer spoke, to Viv Jones.

(Photo: Danser le Twist, 1963 by Malick Sidibé. Credit: Galerie MAGNIN-A, Paris)

In 2005, campaigner Ilguilas Weila organised a ceremony to free 7,000 enslaved people in the West African country of Niger.

Slavery had been a major problem in Niger for generations, with an estimated 43,000 people living under forced control.

Ilguilas has been sharing his memories of that time with Matt Pintus.

(Photo: Former enslaved woman Hadizatou Mani-Karoau at a 2008 court hearing. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

On 25 May 1963, leaders of 32 newly-independent African nations came together for the first time in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

At stake was the dream of a united Africa.

In 2013, Alex Last spoke to Dr Bereket Habte Selassie who took part in that first gathering.

(Photo: Haile Selassie, centre, and Ghana's first President Kwame Nkrumah, left, during the formation of the Organisation of African Unity. Credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Journalist Jonathan Guyer examines the different forms of noir fiction addressing the failed revolutions, jihadism, and chaos in Egypt.

Away from caliphate building and sectarianism, a neo-noir revolution has been creeping across the Middle East, allowing artists and writers to act as ombudsmen in the current political climate. Jonathan meets the writers who are latching onto the adventure, despair and paranoia prevalent in genre fiction to tell stories that transcend the present. He looks at Ahmed Mourad's novel, Vertigo, and Magdy El-Shafee's graphic novel, Metro, which Egyptian authorities seized all copies of before release.

Drawing parallels with the golden age of noir in America, Jonathan argues that, while the Middle East offers an ethereal backdrop like that of post-war America, the Middle East's neo-noir revolution is anything but nostalgic, giving authors and scholars an opportunity to critique imported wars, local autocrats and arrested revolutions.

What's surprising, he finds, is not that detective fiction is showing a sudden popularity in Cairo and beyond but that the genre has been relatively dormant for the last several decades. Sorting through the discarded vintage dime novels in creaky Cairo bookstalls, he discovers that detective fiction has had a long relationship with Arab readers.

Presented by Jonathan Guyer Produced by Sean Glynn and David Waters An SPG production for BBC Radio 4.

Johannesburg-based journalist Ofeibea Quist-Arcton looks at how music thrived alongside events such as the Sharpeville massacre, the Bantu Education Act, the Soweto Riots of 1976 and, of course, the fall of apartheid.

Marcel Berlins recalls one of the 20th century's greatest political trials. In the dock were nine men, including Nelson Mandela. All were charged with sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the state by revolution.