Children as young as 11 have been targeted by violence and beheaded in northeast Mozambique during an jihadist insurgency in the region, the charity Save the Children says.

Prosecutors in Algeria are seeking an 18-month prison sentence for a journalist on charges including defamation, a penalty Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has slammed as "disproportionate".

Two Malian soldiers have been killed in an attack in a northeastern region where jihadist groups are rampant, the army said.

American military personnel will spend two months training soldiers in Mozambique to help the country fight a jihadist insurgency in its northeast, US embassy officials said.

The oil producer surpassed South Africa on a list of 82 countries whose unemployment rates are tracked by Bloomberg. Namibia still leads the list with 33.4%

Gunmen have seized an unspecified number of primary school pupils and teachers in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kaduna, the government said, in a region wracked by banditry and kidnapping.

Uganda's opposition leader Bobi Wine was briefly detained on Monday as he led an anti-government demonstration in the capital, his latest effort to reject the results of a January presidential election he says he won.

At least 15 civilians were massacred overnight in eastern DR Congo, a monitoring group in the region said Monday, saying the notorious ADF militia were suspected.

Somalia on Monday received its first shipment of 300 000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, destined for frontline workers and those most at risk from Covid-19, the government said in a statement.

Armed men attempted to kidnap more students in Nigeria's Kaduna state overnight, a state government official said, as 39 others from an earlier attack remain missing.

Ethiopia gave out its first coronavirus vaccine doses on Saturday, as the health ministry warned of an "alarming" increase in cases.

The local government declared the radius of the blast site a catastrophe zone and announced three days of national mourning starting on Wednesday.

Nigerian security forces stepped up efforts on Saturday to rescue dozens of students who were abducted from their hostels in northwestern Kaduna state in the latest attack on schools, police and officials said.

NAIROBI, March 12 - Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday extended a nationwide overnight COVID-19 curfew for 60 days to battle a third wave of infections in East Africa's wealthiest economy.

Tanzania's President John Magufuli is in good health and working normally, one of his diplomats has told a broadcaster in Namibia, countering reports he had been flown to hospital in Kenya and then India in a critical condition with Covid-19.

Nigerian gunmen have snatched an unspecified number of students from a college in a northwestern state, local police have said, in the latest abduction targeting schools.

A judge in Mauritania's capital Nouakchott has charged ex-president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and about 10 other figures with corruption, following an investigation into his decade-long rule.

President Alassane Ouattara says country ‘in mourning’ after death of Hamed Bakayoko from cancer.

Mauritius has gone into lockdown and suspended flights in and out of the island for two weeks following the discovery of 15 more cases of Covid-19.

After casting itself as a fighter against corruption, Sierra Leone's government is under fire over allegations of irregular spending by its first lady and a senior minister.