The teenage refugee from the war-torn region of Tigray in Ethiopia had just had a narrow escape from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea - like countless others before him.

US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will start her four-nation tour in South Africa on Tuesday and will then go to, Angola, Gabon and France.

A court in eSwatini, Africa's last absolute monarchy where homosexuality is still banned, has rejected a bid by the country's leading LGBTQ rights group for official recognition, the group has said.

One of Algeria's leading opposition figures, Karim Tabbou, has been arrested again, rights groups have said.

Twenty-seven years after the Rwandan genocide, five central figures are yet to be located and brought to book, with the US State Department putting up US$5 million (around R80 million) for information leading to their capture.

Despite a "definitive" ban from operating in Mali, France 24 television and radio service RFI say they will work on providing technical solutions to ensure Malians can continue to have access to information.

Uganda is open to the idea of sending troops to fight insurgents in Mozambique's Cabo Delgado region, President Yoweri Museveni says.

South Africa remains the country that has recorded the most infections and deaths in Africa since the pandemic began.

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday praised the West Africa's regional bloc ECOWAS for developing what he called a "decisive" anti-coup strategy.

The European Union has begun funding the African Union's peace and security initiatives to the tune of R10 billion for the next three years.

Rwanda's Food and Drug Authority said in a press release that "the products are being recalled because they were manufactured in a facility where Salmonella Typhimurium was detected".

Senate outlaws the paying of ransoms to kidnappers and made abduction punishable by death.

From South Africa, where unprecedented floods this month washed away farmland, to the excessive logging of Kenya's mountain forests, Africa is fast losing healthy land, putting millions of people at risk of hunger and losing their homes and incomes.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame says being a celebrity cannot put one above the country's laws.

Twenty Muslim worshippers were killed in Ethiopia's Amhara region in clashes with unidentified armed men, an Islamic leader in the region said.

The relationship between France and its former colony continues to deteriorate as Mali continues engagements with Russia.

African countries are being urged to move toward integrating routine immunisation programmes with Covid-19 ones to cover lost ground.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has kicked off Ebola vaccinations to stem an outbreak in the northwest city of Mbandaka, the World Health Organisation has said.

The Central African Republic has adopted bitcoin as legal tender, the president's office said Wednesday, becoming the second country in the world to do so behind El Salvador.

Two people have died within a week in Mbandaka in the Équateur province in the latest outbreak of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.