The Iranian foreign ministry has announced that Iran and Djibouti have decided to restore ties after seven years, following a meeting between their foreign ministers in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session.

Djibouti, along with some other Muslim countries, joined Saudi Arabia in cutting diplomatic relations with Iran in response to the storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran by Iranians protesters in 2016 - following the execution of top Saudi Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

"The two governments have agreed to further develop friendly relations between the two countries on the basis of mutual respect for sovereignty, equality, mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence," read part of a statement published by Iran on Thursday.

It added that the two countries have agreed to strengthen co-operation on a "wide range of areas including investment, trade, science, and technological innovation".

Saudi Arabia restored diplomatic ties with Iran earlier this year - a move which appears to have paved the way for Iran to mend relations with some Saudi allies, including Egypt.

Wazir Khamsin
BBC News

Image source, AFP

The exiled former president of the Central African Republic (CAR), Francois Bozizé, has been sentenced to life in prison by a court in the country's capital, Bangui.

The 76-year-old, who now leads a rebel coalition, was convicted in his absence of charges including rebellion and undermining security.

Handed down on Thursday, the judgement gave no details on the time period or crimes concerned.

More than 20 others, including two of Mr Bozizé's sons, were also convicted in their absence.

Mr Bozizé seized power in the CAR in 2003. He was overthrown a decade later, sparking a last civil war that has killed thousands of people.

He now lives in Guinea-Bissau.

BBC Newsday
World Service radio

Image source, Abdelali Mahfodi

A teacher in Morocco has told the BBC he feels unable to support pupils traumatised from the recent devastating earthquake as he is struggling to recover himself.

Abdelali Mahfodi spoke to Newsday from the town of Amizmiz, two weeks on from the strongest quake to hit the north African country in more than 60 years.

As large parts of Amizmiz have been reduced to rubble, many in the town are unable to shower or change their clothes, Mr Mahfodi told the Newsday radio show.

The English teacher said his pupils need "psychological support", but "I haven't changed clothes in four days, how do you expect someone in this situation to strive in order to get students back on the rails?"

More than 2,900 people were killed by the 6.8-magnitude earthquake, which struck Morocco on 8 September.

Morocco's authorities have said 120bn dirhams ($11.6bn; £9.4bn) will be spent on rebuilding impacted areas and that victims will receive financial aid.

However, no exact timeframe has been given for these plans. Morocco has also been very selective in accepting foreign aid, only agreeing to receive help from four countries - Qatar, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and the UK.

Listen back to Mr Mahfodi's full account on the BBC's Newsday radio show.

Prince Alemayehu, who was taken to the UK aged seven, died at 18 after an unhappy upbringing.

The Newsroom
BBC World Service

A well-known satirical cartoonist in Tunisia has been released after several hours of questioning by the police.

The family of Tawfiq Omrane says that he has been told that he must attend a court hearing in Tunis next week.

Mr Omrane was detained on Thursday for allegedly insulting the Tunisian prime minister, Ahmed Hachani in his cartoons.

Mr Hachani was appointed by President Kais Saied, who seized almost all executive powers in Tunisia just over two years ago.

Mr Omrane has been highly critical of the president in his cartoons.

Opposition activists see his detention as the latest attack on free speech.

Image source, Getty Images

Somalia is seeking a delay in the withdrawal of African Union peacekeeping forces in the country.

The country has asked the UN to delay by three months the next phase of departure of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) troops.

"Somalia formally requests a technical pause in the drawdown of the 3,000 ATMIS uniformed personnel by three months," the AFP news agency quotes a letter written to the UN by Somalia’s national security adviser Hussein Sheikh-Ali as saying.

A total of 3,000 troops of the 17,000-strong force were due to leave by the end of the month in the second phase of the withdrawal.

But the Somali government, which is currently waging a war against al-Shabab militants says it is facing “significant setbacks”.

Resolutions passed by the UN have called for the complete withdrawal of the ATMIS force by the end of next year and fully hand over the responsibility of maintaining security to Somali national forces.

The force began the gradual drawdown of its troops in June.

Ever since al-Shabab attacked the Westgate shopping mall, Kenya's Somali community has felt targeted by security forces.

Image source, AFP

South Africa’s poultry farmers and retailers have warned residents to brace for higher egg and chicken prices, as millions of chickens continue to die amid power cuts and avian flu.

South Africa’s Mpumalanga province reported an outbreak of avian flu in April and the deadlier H7N6 strain of the flu in May.

The bird flu has since spread to four other provinces, forcing poultry farmers to cull their chickens.

“The bird flu has already caused short supplies of table eggs into the market, and it is expected that the supply of poultry meat into the value chain could be affected negatively in the coming months,” Astral Foods, one of South Africa’s biggest chicken producers said on Thursday.

The company announced that its financial performance had declined due to losses associated with bird flu and increased operational costs caused by power cuts.

The company said it spends 45m rand ($2.4m; £1.9m) each month to run diesel generators.

Abongile Balarane, the head of the South African Poultry Association, told the Daily Maverick earlier this month that the country had lost more than four million chicken, amounting to 15% of the national production.

Image source, Reuters

An Ethiopian-born US contractor who worked at the State and Justice departments has been arrested and charged with sending classified information to Ethiopia.

Abraham Teklu Lemma, 50, is accused of passing on classified information since last August to an official associated with Ethiopia’s intelligence service, external, the Justice Department said.

The department did not name the African country he was allegedly spying for, but it was identified by the New York Times and other US media outlets as Ethiopia.

He faces three charges, including gathering or delivering defence information to aid a foreign government and unauthorised possession of national defence information and willfully retaining it.

Mr Abraham, whose arrest last month was kept under seal until Thursday, is a naturalised US citizen of Ethiopian descent living in Silver Spring, Maryland.

He worked as an IT administrator for the Department of State, and as a management analyst for the Department of Justice. The suspect had been granted top secret security clearance and access to the US classified systems.

He could face the death penalty if convicted of espionage.

Hanna Temuari
BBC News, Addis Ababa

Image source, AFP

African governments have called on the UN Human Rights Council to terminate the mandate of a team of human rights experts on Ethiopia after the submission of its latest report earlier this week.

The expert panel said war crimes and crimes against humanity were still being committed despite the signing of cessation of hostilities agreement officially ending the war in Tigray.

It further stated that violent confrontations are at a near-national scale.

But an Ethiopian delegate accused the commission of failing to recognise the efforts of the government and engaging in "defamatory rhetoric with questionable methodology".

In its call for the ending of the expert panel's mandate, a representative of the African Group - made up of the 54 African Union member states at the UN - said domestic measures of accountability should be taken by Ethiopian government with nationwide consultations.

The delegate, who spoke at the ongoing regular meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, said this was successfully under way.

The call stands in stark contrast to calls by global rights watchdogs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for the mandate to be extended amid renewed violence in northern Ethiopia.

The UN-commissioned experts visited Ethiopia in July last year but their stay was limited to the capital, Addis Ababa, as they were denied access to any of the areas that were affected by the conflict in northern Ethiopia.

Their mandate is due to end in December unless the council decides otherwise.

Image source, Voice of Nigeria/X

A veteran Nigerian radio journalist, Hamisu Danjibga, has been found dead in north-west Zamfara state three days after he was declared missing.

Danjibga worked with the Voice of Nigeria (VON) for many years, where he reported extensively on the widespread insecurity in Zamfara state.

He was declared missing early Monday before his body was found in a pit behind his house.

The VON in a statement said the journalist had been kidnapped, external by "terrorists", describing his death as murder.

The Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and other press organisations have condemned the alleged killing of Danjibga.

Zamfara state Governor Dauda Lawal has ordered security agencies to investigate the incident.

Fellow journalists said Danjibga's broadcast voice gave him an edge over others during his decades-long career as a reporter.

Youssef Taha
BBC World Service News

Image source, Getty Images

The Tunisian journalists' union has condemned the authorities for arresting a popular cartoonist.

It called for the immediate release of Tawfiq Omrane.

He's been charged with offensive activity over his drawings that poke fun at Tunisian Prime Minister Ahmed Hachani.

Mr Omrane's lawyer said he had been seized at his home and taken to the national security office in the town of Mégrine, near the capital, Tunis, at the orders of the public prosecutor.

Mr Omrane is well known for his satirical cartoons of President Kais Saied too.

The increasingly autocratic president, who seized almost all powers two years ago, has had many of his critics detained in recent months.

General Burhan has asked for the Rapid Support Forces to be designated as a terror group.

Image source, AFP

The population of southern white rhinos has increased for the first time since 2012, a leading conservation group has said as it revealed the results of its annual survey.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) announced on Thursday, external that “white rhinos now number around 16,803 animals, an increase of 5.6%” from the previous year.

“Notably, this is the first increase in white rhino numbers since 2012,” it added.

The black rhino population also increased and reached nearly 6,500 by the end of last year.

However, Michael Knight, the chair of the IUCN African Rhino Specialist Group said that despite the growth of Africa’s rhino population, conservation was still necessary as poaching remained high.

In 2022, Africa lost 561 rhinos to poaching, 448 of which were killed in South Africa.

Poaching losses nearly doubled in Namibia, increasing from 47 rhinos killed in 2021 to 93 in 2022.

In Kenya, one rhino died from poaching, down from six in 2021.

Earlier this month conservation group African Parks said it planned to release 2,000 southern white rhinos into the wild after buying the world's largest private captive rhino breeding operation in South Africa.

There are only two surviving members of another subspecies, the northern white rhino - both female and both in Kenya. It is thought that rhino-horn poaching brought about their near extinction.

Image source, AFP

Guinea's junta leader, Col Mamady Doumbouya, has said the Western model of democracy does not work in Africa, as he defended the use of military intervention.

He told the UN General Assembly in New York that the continent was suffering from a “model of governance that has been imposed on us” and which was “having trouble adapting to our reality".

“It is time to stop lecturing us and stop treating us with condescension like children,” he added.

Col Doumbouya took power in a coup in 2021, ousting President Alpha Condé.

He defended taking that action to the UN assembly saying it was "to save our country from complete chaos".

At the time, news of the coup was greeted by excited crowds in the capital, Conakry, as many were relieved that President Condé had been deposed.

But the country was suspended from the regional group, Ecowas, in the wake of the military takeover, with regional leaders calling for a return to civilian rule.

Last year, Col Doumbouya's did give a timetable for a transition to elected government after talks with Ecowas but there has been little progress in organising a vote, the Reuters news agency reports.

Guinea is among a number of countries in western and central Africa that have seen coups in recent years including Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon.

The coups have been strongly condemned by Ecowas, the African Union and the UN.

Our proverb of the day:

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

Farming fish has seen rapid growth in Africa but it can be an expensive, high-risk operation.

That's all for now from the BBC Africa Live team - we'll be back on Friday morning.

There will be an automated news feed here until then and you can get the latest updates at BBCAfrica.com and find out about stories behind the news on the Focus on Africa podcast.

A reminder of Thursday's wise words:

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

And we leave you with this photo of a woman in Egypt's capital, Cairo, decorating a statuette made of sugar - which will be sold next week during celebrations to mark the Prophet Muhammad's birthday.

Image source, AFP

A clip of US televangelist Benny Hinn saying he has been invited to Kenya for a state-sponsored prayer rally has been causing an uproar online.

In the video, external, which looks like it is from a service filmed about a month ago, the pastor says the invite comes from Kenya’s First Lady Rachel Ruto.

He says Mrs Ruto had flown over to Florida with the invitation for him to do a “nationwide, government-sponsored crusade”.

Mrs Ruto, who is currently in New York, has not commented on the alleged invite.

The revelation has angered some online who see it as a misuse of taxpayers money at a time when the cost of living has been going up.

“You don't spend millions to invite pastors when the poor going through hardships are asking you to lower the prices of basic commodities,” one Kenyan tweeted, external - a reflection of many of the comments.

Yūsuf Akínpẹ̀lú
BBC News, Lagos

The body of Nigerian Afrobeats star MohBad has been exhumed, police in the city of Lagos say.

The 27-year-old singer, whose real name was Ilerioluwa Aloba, died on Tuesday 12 September in a Lagos hospital.

The exact circumstances of his death have not been made public and there have been calls from his fans for an investigation.

“Exhumation completed. Autopsy to commence,” Lagos state police spokesperson Benjamin Hundeyin tweeted.

Since the musician’s death there have been rallies across cities in southern Nigeria and an outpouring of grief as people call for answers. The hashtag #justiceformohbad has been trending on social media.

The late singer was popular for his baritone voice and streetwise, sometimes lewd, lyrics.