With Nigeria's economy struggling and insecurity rife, four top presidential candidates start campaigning this week for next February's election in an open race to replace President Muhammadu Buhari.

The World Health Organisation says the Ebola that recently broke out in Uganda, called the Sudan strain, is not as lethal as the Zaire strain found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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A former Central African Republic rebel commander pleaded not guilty at the International Criminal Court on Monday at the start of his trial on charges of "awful" war crimes.

Kenyan great Eliud Kipchoge beat his own world marathon record by 30 seconds, running 2hr 01min 9sec in Berlin on Sunday.

A proposed natural gas pipeline running from Tanzania and Uganda may have a positive environmental impact, says Standard Bank's east African chief executive Patrick Mweheire.

The authority which runs the affairs of Zimbabwe’s capital has reached an agreement with the central bank allowing it to charge for services in local and foreign currency.

The cheese, which researchers identified as halloumi, was found in a new round of excavations in the vast Saqqara necropolis near Cairo in Egypt.

The head of Sudan's ruling council General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has said that no fixed date had been set for elections, but the military would not wait forever.

One person has been killed in a fresh air strike on Ethiopia's rebel-held Tigray the region's biggest hospital has said, capping a month of renewed clashes between pro-government forces and Tigrayan fighters.

Uganda has confirmed seven cases of Ebola including in a man who died this week, and seven other deaths are being investigated as suspected cases of a strain for which the authorities do not yet have a vaccine, officials said.

A Burkina Faso court has found three former presidential guards guilty of involvement in the 1990 murder of a student leader, and sentenced them to terms of 10 to 30 years in prison.

Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari has criticised fellow leaders who extend term limits to cling to power, saying this was having a "corrosive" effect, and promised free and fair elections when the country elects his successor.

Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi has accused Rwanda of direct aggression, renewing charges as he addressed the United Nations.

The leader of Tunisia's Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party has been questioned through the night by counter-terrorism police over alleged complicity in the departure of jihadist militants for Syria and Iraq.

Equatorial Guinea has abolished the death penalty after the country's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo signed a new penal code into law.

Tunisia's anti-terrorism police have detained for one day Ali Laarayedh, a former prime minister and senior official in the Islamist opposition Ennahda party, after an investigation into suspicions of sending jihadists to Syria.

Twenty-three women members of a Zambian church died on Monday when their speeding vehicle ran off the road in the north of the country, police said.

Government contractors are contesting last month’s decision by Zimbabwe’s Treasury to halt payments on the grounds that they were overcharging for goods and services.