AFRICA

Yaounde, Cameroon | AFP | The Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon’s restive Anglophone region, where separatists are waging an armed insurgency, said Friday it suspected the army of killing a Kenyan priest two days ago. Cosmos Omboto Ondari, a 33-year-old cleric, was shot dead on Wednesday at a church in …

Juba, South Sudan | AFP |  South Africa and South Sudan signed an outline agreement on Friday that could see Pretoria invest around $1 billion (880 million euros) in South Sudan’s struggling oil industry. The agreement, which will be subject to detailed negotiations between the countries, was made between two …

  Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Africa Legislators have signed the Kampala Declaration 2018, with a commitment to devise and apply effective strategies to end corruption. The MPs meeting under the auspices of the African Organization of Public Account Committees (AFROPAC) resolved to analyse whether existing instruments, effective policies …

Lisbon, Portugal | AFP |  Angolan President Joao Lourenco on Thursday compared the fight against corruption in his country to “touching a wasps nest”, a day after his predecessor Jose Eduardo dos Santos refuted allegations he emptied the state’s finances. Dos Santos, who stepped down in September 2017 following 38 …

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | President Yoweri Museveni has received a special message from President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi. The message was delivered to the President today at State House, Entebbe by Burundi Foreign Affairs Minister, Ezechiel Nibigira, who was accompanied by Burundi’s Ambassador to Uganda, Jean Bosco Barege, …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP |  South African President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled a limited cabinet reshuffle Thursday ahead of elections in May when the ruling ANC party will seek to turn around its decline in popularity. In the most significant of three appointments, Siyabonga Cwele, 60, was moved from the …

  Harare, Zimbabwe | AFP | Zimbabwe’s new finance minister Mthuli Ncube announced a five-percent cut to senior government officials’ salaries on Thursday in a bid to mend the shattered economy. Ncube’s budget also set out plans for the biometric registration of civil servants to weed out “ghost” workers who …

Kinshasa, DR Congo | AFP |  Ugandan rebels on Thursday fired on a UN helicopter in an attack in the volatile east of DR Congo, though there were no victims, UN sources said. “One of our helicopters was fired on in Semuliki valley by rebels — we reacted in legitimate …

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | AFP | Ethiopia’s former opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa, who recently returned from exile, was on Thursday named as head of the country’s election body ahead of the 2020 polls. Birtukan’s appointment makes her the latest woman to be appointed to a high-profile role and the most …

Paris, France | AFP | African museum directors on Wednesday welcomed an expert report calling on France to allow the return of thousands of African treasures and artworks, a radical policy shift that could put pressure on other former colonial powers. Calls have been growing in Africa for restitution, but …