AFRICA

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP |  Three teenage schoolgirls in Burundi have been sent to prison to await trial for scribbling on a picture of President Pierre Nkurunziza in textbooks, activists said Thursday. The girls, aged 15, 16 and 17, face up to five years in prison for insulting the head …

  Watamu, Kenya | AFP | Snake antivenoms have been around for 125 years, are effective and can be produced cheaply at scale. Yet Africa, with its abundance of deadly snakes, has an alarming shortage of the life-saving medicine. Experts and campaigners blame a combination of weak production capacity, feeble …

Cairo, Egypt | AFP |  A water crisis brewing between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over a contentious Nile dam could escalate into a conflict with “severe humanitarian consequences”, a think-tank said on Wednesday. Egypt, which relies almost totally on the Nile for irrigation and drinking water, fears the Grand Ethiopian …

Cairo, Egypt | AFP | A century after Egypt’s March 1919 revolution, the prominent Wafd party credited with leading popular demands to end the British occupation, has now been largely sidelined on the country’s political scene, analysts say. A one-time liberal opposition force with a mass following, Wafd is considered Egypt’s …

Algiers, Algeria | AFP | Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Monday confirmed he will stay in power beyond his term expiring next month, despite tens of thousands of people demonstrating against his rule. Bouteflika announced on March 11 he was withdrawing from his bid for a fifth term, initially sparking elation …

Paris, France | AFP | The death rate among women undergoing a C-section to deliver a baby is about 50 times higher in Africa than in most wealthy nations, researchers said Friday. One in 200 women perished during or soon after a caesarean in a sampling of nearly 3,700 births …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | Former South African president Jacob Zuma will not seek a place in parliament in the May 8 elections, the ruling party has said, surprising those who expected him to try to stage a comeback. Zuma, who has had a fraught relationship with his successor Cyril Ramaphosa and his anti-graft …

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Attacks on Ebola treatment centres in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), risk reversing the gains made during the current outbreak in the north-east of the country, the head of the UN health agency Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said. Dr Tedros resounded …

Kano, Nigeria | AFP | The deposed leader of an IS-backed faction of Boko Haram has been detained by more radical elements who seized control of the group, three well-informed sources have told AFP. Uncertainty has surrounded the fate of Abu Mus’ab Al-Barnawi after he was replaced as leader of the …

  Berlin, Germany | AFP |  Germany has agreed to speed up the return of human remains and artwork from former African colonies where the country carried out brutal massacres and pillaged indigenous heritage. The German culture and foreign ministries as well as regional and local cultural authorities signed a …