Gunmen in Nigeria on Saturday released 27 teenage boys who were kidnapped from their school last week in the north-central state of Niger, while security forces continued to search for more than 300 schoolgirls abducted in a nearby state.

Business executives are sounding decidedly upbeat in Zimbabwe, a sea change from the pessimism they’ve expressed through two decades of economic mismanagement and institutional decay.

Kidnappers have freed 42 people, including 27 children, snatched from a school in central Nigeria 10 days ago, officials said on Saturday, a day after more than 300 schoolgirls were abducted by gunmen in the northwest.

Unidentified gunmen seized more than 300 girls in a nighttime raid on a school in northwest Nigeria on Friday and are believed to be holding some of them in a forest, police said.

Libya's prime minister-designate Abdul Hamid Dheibah is set to name a transitional government tasked with unifying the war-torn nation and leading it to elections in December.

Police in Cameroon have arrested nine people on suspicion of homosexuality, most of them at an HIV/AIDS care centre, an LGBT rights lawyer said.

The African Union is backing calls for drugmakers to waive some intellectual property rights on Covid-19 medicines and vaccines to speed up their rollout to poor countries, the head of its disease control body.

Liquid Telecom, majority owned by telecoms tycoon Strive Masiyiwa, raised $840 million in a bond sale to refinance debt and expand further into Africa.

Gunmen have killed 36 people in two attacks in Nigeria, a day after insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades amid worsening security facing Africa's most populous nation.

Niger opposition leader Mahamane Ousmane has claimed that he narrowly won the country’s presidential election.

Zimbabwe's 71-year-old Vice President Kembo Mohadi on Wednesday refuted accusations of sexual misconduct by an online news outlet, saying he is the victim of "political machinations".

Zimbabwe will buy an additional 1.2 million Covid-19 vaccine doses from China at a preferential price, President Emmerson Mnangagwa's spokesman said on Wednesday.

Two Malian soldiers have been killed in an ambush in a central region regularly hit by jihadist attacks, security sources and a local official has said.

Ghana has received the first shipment of Covid-19 vaccines from Covax, a global scheme to procure and distribute inoculations for free.

The body of the Italian ambassador killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo has arrived in Rome, as Rwandan Hutu rebels denied accusations they were behind the attack.

Applications for a second round of the R28 million Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge across the Africa region just opened, as big tech companies tussle with Australia about media funding.

Senegal began its coronavirus vaccination campaign on Tuesday with 200 000 doses that it purchased from China's Sinopharm, which it received last week.

Rwandan Hutu rebels have denied allegations they were behind the killing of the Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Fifteen members of a contingent of Ethiopian peacekeepers in South Sudan have refused to return to Ethiopia, the UN has said.

Guinea will launch an Ebola vaccination drive after a flight delayed by a Saharan dust storm arrived carrying thousands of jabs.