Racism against people of African descent remains systemic in many parts of the world, the UN human rights chief said yesterday, calling for states to dismantle discrimination and prosecute law enforcement officials for unlawful killings.

One Spanish and two Ethiopian employees of the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) have been “brutally murdered” in Ethiopia’s war-torn northern Tigray region, the organisation said Friday.

Australia and Israel, which had been successful in fending off Covid-19, reimposed restrictions yesterday as cases surged of the highly contagious Delta variant which also threatened Africa with a brutal third wave.

A Nigerian police inspector has killed five civilians and injured four in a shooting rampage, police said yesterday, in the latest violence in the country’s restive southeast.

Ethiopians yesterday began voting in a closely-watched election taking place as famine grips the war-torn Tigray region and doubts linger about the credibility of the twice-delayed vote.

The U.N. rights chief said on Monday she was "deeply disturbed" by reports of continued violations including executions in Ethiopia's Tigray region, and added that a long-awaited joint investigation should be ready by August.

Ghana aimed to plant at least 5 million trees in a single day on Friday to help regrow the country's lost forests and curb the impacts of climate change, the president said.

In the global race to vaccinate people against COVID-19, Africa is tragically at the back of the pack.

Eleven people were killed after unknown gunmen attacked a town in southwestern Nigeria, police said on Sunday.

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.

A Nigerian state government said it was negotiating with gunmen who seized 136 children from an Islamic seminary at the weekend, the latest in a string of mass kidnappings in the country.

The African Union has suspended Mali's membership in response to last week's military coup and threatened sanctions if a civilian-led government is not restored, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Mali's ousted interim president and prime minister have been freed after they were detained by the military and later resigned, an aide to the vice president said on Thursday.

Suspected Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militants killed at least 22 civilians with knives and machetes in an overnight raid on villages near the town of Beni in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a local official said on Wednesday.

Mali's interim president and prime minister resigned on Wednesday, two days after they were arrested by the military, an aide to the vice president said.

Military officers in Mali detained the president, prime minister and defence minister of the interim government on Monday, deepening political chaos just months after a military coup ousted the previous president, multiple sources told Reuters.

An Egyptian court today rejected a complaint by the Japanese owner of a container ship that blocked traffic in the Suez Canal for six days in March against the vessel's continued detention by canal authorities, a lawyer said.

Congo’s Mount Nyiragongo erupted for the first time in nearly two decades Saturday, turning the night sky a fiery red and sending lava onto a major highway as panicked residents tried to flee Goma, a city of nearly 2 million.

Last month the World Health Organization urged African nations not to destroy expired doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine after several countries received doses from India with a very short shelf life. But this week, WHO reversed its position and said that the vaccines should be destroyed.

The start of the corruption trial of South Africa’s scandal-tainted ex-president Jacob Zuma, which was slated to start yesterday, has been postponed to May 26, a judge said.