AFRICA

Abuja, Nigeria | AFP | South Africa’s MTN has denied it illegally transferred $13.9 billion from Nigeria in the latest scandal to hit the telecom firm in its largest market in the continent. The Johannesburg-based firm is facing a parliamentary probe over accusations it connived with senior Nigerian officials to …

Pretoria, South Africa | AFP | South Africa announced Friday that it is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, dealing a major blow to a troubled institution set up to try the world’s worst crimes. South Africa’s decision followed a dispute last year when Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir visited the …

Khartoum, Sudan | AFP |  Africa’s economic growth is expected to dip this year before rebounding in 2017 to remain the world’s second fastest growing region after east Asia, the African Development Bank said Thursday. Africa’s growth in Gross Domestic Product is expected to fall to 1.9 percent this year …

Aweil, South Sudan | AFP | A serious food crisis in the north of South Sudan is reaching critical levels, as a biting drought across much of east Africa serves up even more woes for the troubled country. In Northern Bahr Al Gazal it is not the incessant cycles of …

The Hague, Netherlands | AFP | International judges on Wednesday found former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba and four close aides guilty of bribing and corrupting witnesses in a bid to derail his landmark war crimes trial. The case was “about the clear, and downright criminal behaviour of the five …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP |  Kenya’s new chief justice was sworn in on Wednesday pledging to root out corruption in the judiciary. David Maraga, 66, replaces Willy Mutunga who took early retirement in June, triggering a parliamentary vetting process in which Maraga emerged as frontrunner out of a dozen candidates. …

Rumangabo, DR Congo | AFP | A powerful combination of love and guns is helping rebuild an endangered gorilla community in the jungles of war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Threatened with extinction, some of the world’s last remaining mountain gorillas live on either side of the border between Rwanda …

Bujumbura, Burundi | AFP |  President Pierre Nkurunziza on Tuesday signed legislation enabling Burundi to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC). A copy of the law seen by AFP and dated October 18 allows “the Republic of Burundi’s withdrawal from the Rome statute”, the ICC’s founding treaty. The next …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | Political drama, corruption allegations and even wedding party controversies — the Gupta family, one of South Africa’s wealthiest, has been accused of wielding undue influence behind the scenes. Now the immigrant family is at the centre of a row battering President Jacob Zuma after …

Kinshasa, DR Congo | AFP | Participants in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s “national dialogue” agreed Monday, in the absence of the main opposition coalition, to push back to April 2018 the presidential election due to take place before the end of the year. The accord was announced after the …