AFRICA

Kano, Nigeria | AFP | A fresh outbreak of gang violence in northern Nigeria has left at least 27 people dead, locals told AFP on Friday, highlighting the volatile security situation in West Africa’s largest economy. On Thursday suspected cattle thieves launched reprisal attacks on two villages in northern Nigeria’s …

Harare, Zimbabwe | AFP | Scores of Zimbabwe nurses on Friday protested in Harare’s central city park after the government dismissed them for striking over low salaries and poor working conditions. The nurses, who wore their white uniforms, demanded the government reverse its decision to fire the majority of the …

Mafikeng, South Africa | AFP | South African police on Friday fired rubber bullets at protesters after President Cyril Ramaphosa cut short a foreign trip to deal with violent riots over alleged government corruption and poor public services. Shops were looted, roads were blocked and vehicles set alight in North …

New York, United States | AFP | A Liberian former warlord whose forces committed atrocities including murders and cannibalism during the country’s civil war was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in US prison — for immigration-related fraud and perjury. Nicknamed “Jungle Jabbah,” 51-year-old Mohammed Jabateh commanded the “United Liberation Movement …

  London, UK  | THE INDEPENDENT | President Yoweri Museveni has held meetings with several leaders at the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) including UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson with whom he held a productive meeting to discuss the Commonwealth. According to sources the two leaders talked …

Harare, Zimbabwe | AFP | A Zimbabwe parliament committee has summoned former president Robert Mugabe to give evidence on May 9 over diamond corruption costing billions of dollars, underlining his fall from power after 37 years of autocratic rule. Mugabe, now 94, ruled Zimbabwe from 1980 until he was ousted …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza reshuffled his cabinet Thursday, replacing the foreign minister but keeping officials in charge of next month’s constitutional referendum that could see him stay in power until 2034. High-profile foreign minister Alain-Aime Nyamitwe, the brother of press chief Willy Nyamitwe, was removed …

  Juba, South Sudan | THE INDEPENDENT | South Sudan army chief,  Gen James Ajong’a Mawut is dead, reports from Juba indicate. Eye Radio in Juba has reported the the South Sudan People’s Liberation Army SPLA Chief of Defense Force, Ajong’a Mawut, passed away this week. The death was confirmed by …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has cut short his participation in the Commonwealth summit in Britain to tackle violent demonstrations at home, his office said, in one of the first major challenges of his new presidency. Ramaphosa, who took office in February with promises …

Khartoum, Sudan | AFP | President Omar al-Bashir on Thursday fired Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour, state media reported, after he said that Sudanese diplomats abroad had been unpaid for months. In a speech to lawmakers on Wednesday, Ghandour, who negotiated the lifting of decades-old sanctions with Washington in October 2017, …