Senegal could start manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines as soon as next year, as part of a global push to boost vaccine production in Africa.

News24 has appointed seasoned journalist Lynsey Chutel to head up its Africa desk.

Senegal could begin producing Covid-19 vaccines next year under an agreement with Belgian biotech group Univercells aimed at boosting Africa's drug-manufacturing ambitions, a source involved in funding the project told Reuters.

Zimbabwe wants to ban forex auctions because of black-market concerns. Officials are concerned traders are selling foreign currency at inflated prices.

Nigerian pastor and televangelist TB Joshua has died, according to social media posts on his official Twitter account and news reports.

Suspected jihadists have massacred at least 138 civilians in Burkina Faso's volatile north in the deadliest attacks since Islamist violence erupted in the west African country in 2015, officials said Saturday.

Supporters of Mali's M5 opposition movement staged a rally on Friday, with the group poised to join the government following the crisis-stricken country's second coup in nine months.

Nigeria said on Friday it had indefinitely suspended Twitter's activities, two days after the social media giant removed a post from President Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists.

The decision follows Twitter's removal of the Nigerian president's tweet for violating its "abusive behaviour" policy.

Namibia has expressed disappointment in what was hailed as a historic apology from Germany over the 1904 to 1908 genocide.

Zimbabwe's government said on Friday citizens should not panic because it had enough Covid-19 vaccines for those needing a second shot after some centres ran out of doses this week and turned people away.

Mali's neighbours and its ally France have struggled to formulate a firm response to the latest twist in the years-long crisis gripping the key Sahel country.

Egypt on Friday sent an aid convoy to neighbouring Gaza with diggers, trucks and cranes to "prepare the ground for reconstruction" of the bomb-battered Palestinian enclave, the government said.

Attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces militia on displacement camps in the eastern DR Congo on 31 May killed 57 civilians, the United Nations said on Friday.

Cameroonian postcolonial scholar Achille Mbembe raised eyebrows when he accepted an invitation by France's President Emmanuel Macron to lead preparations for the upcoming 29th Africa-France Summit.

Hit by a fresh surge of infections and with vaccine deliveries at a near standstill, Africa is not ready to face a third wave of the pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) waned on Thursday.

Thousands of Sudanese took to the streets of Khartoum on Thursday, stepping up their demands for justice for protesters were killed during a crackdown on anti-government demonstrations two years ago.

Malian strongman Colonel Assimi Goita met former Tuareg rebels on Wednesday, officials said, amid political uncertainty after the second coup in nine months in the fragile Sahel state.

A state government in central Nigeria confirmed on Thursday that gunmen seized 136 children from an Islamic seminary at the weekend, the latest in a string of mass kidnappings in the country.

The death of eSwatini student Thabani Nkomonye has sparked outrage among young people who see it as part of a legacy of police brutality in the country.