BBC News

Jerry Rawlings: Remembering Ghana’s ‘man of the people’

image copy­rightAFP As Ghana’s longest-serv­ing leader, for­mer flight lieu­tenant Jer­ry John Rawl­ings, who died on Thurs­day, was an influ­en­tial fig­ure for a gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple like me born in the late 1970s. 

What happens if Zambia defaults on its debt to China and other lenders?

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has put a finan­cial strain on a lot of coun­tries across the world. One of those coun­tries is Zam­bia. The coun­try has had finan­cial issues before Covid-19, but the effects of the pan­dem­ic have not made things any

Africa’s week in pictures: 6 — 12 November 2020

A selec­tion of the week’s best pho­tos from across the con­ti­nent:  image copy­rightEPA image copy­rightReuters image copy­rightReuters image copy­rightEPA image copyrightAFP

Coronavirus: What’s happening to the numbers in Africa?

image copy­rightReuters There’s been a slight increase in Covid-19 infec­tions in Africa over the past few weeks, accord­ing to the lat­est infor­ma­tion. The num­ber of dai­ly new cas­es has been ris­ing grad­u­al­ly after declin­ing since mid-July, accord­ing to the Africa Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) and the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO). But in…

Senegal: Building sustainable schools using ‘moon bricks’

Lebanese archi­tect Leila Mer­oue is using a tech­nique intend­ed to build shel­ters on the moon, to build a sus­tain­able school in the Sene­galese vil­lage of Tivaouane Peulh. The bricks are made using sack cut from a long roll into indi­vid­ual bags

Nigeria: Jigawa State farmers lose ’80% of farmland’ due to flooding

Jigawa State in north-west­­ern Nige­ria expe­ri­enced the worst floods in decades in Sep­tem­ber. 15,000 peo­ple were made home­less and are cur­rent­ly liv­ing in makeshift camps.  The farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty was hit the hard­est, as the major­i­ty of Jigawa’s pop­u­la­tion relies on farming

Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict sparks spread of misinformation

Warn­ing: This sto­ry con­tains images some peo­ple may find dis­tress­ing With the Ethiopi­an gov­ern­ment con­duct­ing a mil­i­tary offen­sive in the north­ern Tigray region, some peo­ple have tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread misinformation

South Africa’s World Cup success still inspiring Springboks Women one year on

When Siya Kolisi lift­ed the Webb Ellis tro­phy a year ago in Japan, Nolusindiso Booi was among those cel­e­brat­ing the coun­try’s third Rug­by World Cup suc­cess.  Also known as Cindy Booi, the 35-year-old

Tanzania elections: Opposition leader Freeman Mbowe arrested

image copy­right­Get­ty Images Police in Tan­za­nia have arrest­ed the chair­man of the main oppo­si­tion par­ty in the wake of dis­put­ed polls. Free­man Mbowe was detained, along with two oth­er Chade­ma lead­ers, for planning

Ivory Coast elections: Vote counting follows unrest at polls

image copy­rightAFP Vote count­ing is under way in Ivory Coast, fol­low­ing a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion that was boy­cotted by the oppo­si­tion. At least 14 peo­ple have been killed since riots broke out in August