Kigali, Rwanda  | THE INDEPENDENT | Dr. Justus Masa, a Ugandan Lecturer at Kyambogo University and Senior Group Leader of Electrocatalysis and Energy at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany is among the 17 NEF Fellow award winners at this year’s Next Einstein Forum(NEF) Global Gathering in Kigali, Rwanda. The event currently taking place …

Lagos, Nigeria | AFP | Lagos, Nigeria’s thriving economic capital, was on lockdown Thursday for President Muhammadu Buhari’s first official visit to the city as campaigning for next year’s presidential polls heats up. In front of the cameras, it was all smiles between Buhari and Bola Tinubu, a political grandee …

Sydney, Australia | AFP | A powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck the New Britain island of Papua New Guinea on Friday, US seismologists said, but a tsunami threat from the tremor was over. The quake struck at 5:25 pm local time (2125 GMT) about 162 kilometres from the New Britain town …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | A Kenyan court fined the interior minister and police chief Thursday after they defied orders to produce an opposition politician in court, who was instead deported for the second time in two months. A prominent but unelected politician with the National Super Alliance (NASA), Miguna Miguna …

Cairo, Egypt | AFP | Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been re-elected for a second term with about 92 percent of the vote, preliminary results showed on Thursday, with just over 40 percent of voters casting ballots. Twenty-five million of the 60 million registered voters, or some 41.5 percent, …

Paris, France | AFP | This summer’s World Cup will feature no English referees for the first time in post-war history, nor assistants, after FIFA confirmed its official list of 99 match officials for Russia 2018 on Thursday. England whistler Mark Clattenburg, who retired from Premier League duty last summer, …

Freetown, Sierra Leone | AFP | Veteran politician Samura Kamara, seen as a shrewd political operator, hopes to take up the mantle of outgoing president Ernest Bai Koroma as his hand-picked successor. An economist by training, the 53-year-old Kamara was foreign minister until last year when he stepped down to pursue …

Freetown, Sierra Leone | AFP | The West African nation of Sierra Leone, among the world’s poorest countries despite significant mineral wealth, has been scarred by a brutal civil war and the deadly Ebola virus. Here is some background as Freetown prepares to hold a delayed presidential runoff on Saturday to …

Hong Kong, China | AFP | Touted as an engineering wonder, the world’s longest sea bridge, which connects Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China, includes a snaking road crossing and an underwater tunnel and reportedly uses enough steel to build 60 Eiffel Towers. Nine years after construction began on the 55-kilometre …

How messages on burning ivory from poached elephants might be missed among those for whom it is intended COMMENT | MATTHEW H. HOLDEN & OTHERS |  The tusks of more than ten thousand elephants went up in flames in Kenya on April 30, 2016 – the world’s largest ever ivory …