Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Burundi on Tuesday launched the official campaign for a referendum on constitutional change that could enable President Pierre Nkurunziza to stay in power for another 16 years. Twenty-six parties, most of them aligned with the ruling CNDD-FDD party, have been authorised to campaign for the …

London, United Kingdom | AFP | British MPs threatened Tuesday to issue a formal summons to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg for him to testify over a major privacy row, after he declined to appear. Zuckerberg was grilled by the US Congress last month but sent one of his executives to …

Kano, Nigeria | AFP | Dozens of people were killed on Tuesday when two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at a mosque and a market in Mubi, northeast Nigeria, residents said. “We have evacuated dozens of dead and injured people to the hospital and the rescue operation is still ongoing,” …

Cairo, Egypt | AFP | Patriotic statements, flashy commercials and an anti-drug campaign: Mohamed Salah’s dazzling displays for Liverpool have taken the football world by storm, and on his home turf in Egypt seemingly everyone wants a piece of him. Salah has shot to stardom thanks to his goal-scoring exploits …

Kano, Nigeria | AFP | At least 10 gold miners were killed by armed men suspected to belong to a kidnapping and cattle rustling gang in the northern Nigeria state of Kaduna, police said Sunday. The bandits opened fire on a group of gold miners at a small-scale mine in …

Bétaré Oya, Cameroon | AFP | For a time, the land around the village of Longa Mali in eastern Cameroon was one of the most prized in Africa, and powerful machines gnawed greedily into its soil to extract precious gold. Today, abandoned with almost the same speed as it was …

Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | Three quarters of freshwater species endemic to East Africa’s Lake Victoria basin face the threat of extinction, conservationists said Monday, warning the biodiversity there was being “decimated”. A fresh report backed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) assessed the extinction risk of …

London, United Kingdom | AFP | Mohamed Salah was Tuesday named as the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year for 2017/18 after scoring 43 goals so far in an incredible debut season for Liverpool. The Egypt international narrowly topped the poll of the 400-strong FWA membership ahead of Manchester …

Washington, United States | AFP | US President Donald Trump pledged stronger support for Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram jihadists Monday, while demanding greater trade access to Africa’s largest economy. After a meeting with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, the first leader from sub-Saharan Africa invited by Trump to the White …

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | People should be paid whenever their personal data is used by tech giants to make money; that is the proposal of Sir Vince Cable, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in the UK. He said data was the ‘new oil’ and the ‘growth …