AFRICA

  Dakar, Senegal | AFP |  Senegal’s President Macky Sall has pardoned former Dakar mayor and political rival Khalifa Sall, who had been sentenced to prison for fraudulent use of public funds, the presidency announced Sunday. Khalifa Sall, no relation of the president, has been in jail since March 2017 …

Tripoli, Libya | AFP |  In Libya, where rival forces are deadlocked south of Tripoli, a months-long battle for the skies between Turkish and UAE drones has failed to break the stalemate, analysts say. Since April 4, when eastern strongman Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive to capture Tripoli — the capital …

Cotonou, Benin | AFP |  Dozens of baskets brimming with newly-picked tomatoes gently rot in the sticky heat, becoming the latest casualty in a bout of trade tension between Benin and Nigeria. On August 19, President Muhammadu Buhari unexpectedly closed Nigeria’s borders to goods trade with Benin and Niger, declaring the …

Chéserex, Switzerland | AFP | A collection of luxury cars seized from Equatorial Guinea’s vice president Teodorin Obiang Nguema will be auctioned off in Switzerland on Sunday and are estimated to bring in 18.5 million Swiss francs ($18.7 million). “This is an exceptional sale,” Philip Kantor, of British auctioneers Bonhams, told …

Zimbabwe | AFP | The family of former Zimbabwe president Robert Gabriel Mugabe gathered in his rural homestead on Saturday, three weeks after his death, to attend a much-awaited burial ceremony in the village of Kutama. Mugabe died in a Singapore hospital on September 6, aged 95, almost two years after …

Buea, Cameroon | AFP |  A solitary teacher has just two pupils in his class in west Cameroon, where thousands of schools have closed down altogether because of kidnappings and threats by radical separatists. Since a crisis erupted in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon late in 2016, schools have …

Cairo, Egypt | AFP |  Scattered protests broke out Friday in Egyptian cities against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as his supporters also took to the streets in counter demonstrations a week after rare anti-Sisi rallies shook the country. Police blocked streets leading to Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the …

Kigali, Rwanda | AFP | A group of 66 African refugees and asylum-seekers have arrived in Kigali from Libya, the UN said, the first in what could be thousands of people being helped to flee the conflict-torn country. The move follows a pledge by President Paul Kagame in 2017 to …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP |  Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday hailed a decision by the International Automobile Federation (FIA) to include the country’s fabled Safari Rally in the world championships from next year. Kenya has worked hard to get its rally back onto the world circuit after it fell …

Casablanca, Morocco | AFP | In Morocco, the struggle against HIV has been so successful in recent years that campaigners worry about losing funding for combatting the virus, but for people living with the disease it remains a heavy stigma. In Casablanca, a group therapy workshop offers HIV patients a rare …