AFRICA

  Caxito, Angola | AFP |  Boxes of still-green bananas were shifted one-by-one from a towering stack of crates into a refrigerated shipping container. Stamped “From Angola, with love”, the fruit is shipped to consumers 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) away and are part of Luanda’s drive to diversify its economy …

        Libreville, Gabon | AFP |  Gabon authorities said Saturday they have banned an opposition party from state media for three months over statements about the health of President Omar Bongo, who has been in a Saudi hospital for a month. Bongo, 59, was rushed to hospital …

  Zvimba, Zimbabwe | AFP |  Zimbabwe’s ex-leader Robert Mugabe is in Singapore for medical care and now unable to walk because of ill health and old age, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said on Saturday. Mnangagwa told his ZANU-PF party supporters at a rally that the 94-year-old Mugabe had been receiving …

Bangui, Central African Republic | AFP | At least four people have been killed in fighting between the army and militias in the capital of Central African Republic, sources said on Friday. The clashes erupted in Bangui’s mainly Muslim PK5 district — an area that has become a flashpoint in …

The Hague, Netherlands | AFP | A former militia leader from the Central African Republic known as “Colonel Rambo” was tortured in detention before his transfer to The Hague on war crimes charges, his lawyer said Friday. The arrest of Alfred Yekatom, who made his first appearance at the International …

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, …