AFRICA

Harare, Zimbabwe | AFP | Illegal gold miners in Zimbabwe have seized a farm belonging to former first lady Grace Mugabe, local media reported, just four months after former President Robert Mugabe was ousted from power. Hundreds of aggressive squatters have taken over portions of Grace’s Smithfield estate in Mazowe, …

Kinshasa, DR Congo | AFP | Around 230,000 people have been driven from their homes in Democratic Republic of Congo, the government estimated Friday, a vastly different figure from the reports of humanitarian groups in the conflict-torn country. Kinshasa put the figure at “231,241 internally displaced people” compared with the …

Dakar, Senegal | AFP | Leading Senegalese politician Khalifa Sall was handed a five-year jail term for fraud on Friday, a sentence that will rule him out of presidential elections due next February. Sall, 62, who is mayor of Dakar, had denied the charges against him as politically motivated. He …

Kano, Nigeria | AFP | The death toll from an attack by suspected cattle rustlers on a herding village in northern Nigeria’s Zamfara state has risen to 36, the local traditional ruler said on Friday. Motorcycle-riding gunmen stormed the village of Bawon-Danji on Wednesday, opening fire on herders and forcing …

Luanda, Angola | AFP | Tensions between Angola’s president and his long-serving predecessor have erupted into the open as an anti-corruption drive targets the former ruler’s family. President Joao Lourenco has pledged to crusade against entrenched state corruption and nepotism since taking over in September from Jose Eduardo dos Santos, …

Lagos, Nigeria | AFP | Lagos, Nigeria’s thriving economic capital, was on lockdown Thursday for President Muhammadu Buhari’s first official visit to the city as campaigning for next year’s presidential polls heats up. In front of the cameras, it was all smiles between Buhari and Bola Tinubu, a political grandee …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | A Kenyan court fined the interior minister and police chief Thursday after they defied orders to produce an opposition politician in court, who was instead deported for the second time in two months. A prominent but unelected politician with the National Super Alliance (NASA), Miguna Miguna …

Cairo, Egypt | AFP | Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been re-elected for a second term with about 92 percent of the vote, preliminary results showed on Thursday, with just over 40 percent of voters casting ballots. Twenty-five million of the 60 million registered voters, or some 41.5 percent, …

Freetown, Sierra Leone | AFP | Veteran politician Samura Kamara, seen as a shrewd political operator, hopes to take up the mantle of outgoing president Ernest Bai Koroma as his hand-picked successor. An economist by training, the 53-year-old Kamara was foreign minister until last year when he stepped down to pursue …

Freetown, Sierra Leone | AFP | The West African nation of Sierra Leone, among the world’s poorest countries despite significant mineral wealth, has been scarred by a brutal civil war and the deadly Ebola virus. Here is some background as Freetown prepares to hold a delayed presidential runoff on Saturday to …