African news : breaking news, features, analysis

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has ordered the opening of his country's border with South Sudan for the first time since the latter seceded in 2011.

The move comes days after reports that South Sudan had ordered its troops to withdraw a short way from the border.

Disputes over the border remain unresolved and the two countries fought over the Heglig oilfield in 2012.

Côte d’ivoire’s former President Laurent Gbagbo has denied charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as his landmark trial began at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The charges relate to the country's civil conflict that erupted after Mr Gbagbo lost elections in 2010.

Prosecutors accuse him of orchestrating a "campaign of violence".

Mr Gbagbo, 70, and ex-militia leader Charles Ble Goude, 44, deny murder, rape, attempted murder and persecution.

Democratic Republic of Congo will take at least 13 months to revise its voter lists, according to what three sources said was an estimate from the elections commission.

This casts doubt on whether 2016 presidential elections will be held on time.

President Joseph Kabila has stopped short of saying he will step down in November at the end of his second elected mandate, though the constitution bars him from seeking a third term.

A document dated January 14 purporting to be from the National Independent Elections Commission (CENI) and published on Twitter, said it would take 13 months and 10 days to carry out even a partial revision of the lists at a cost of $122 million.

Kenya has begun a judicial inquiry into allegations that a Supreme Court judge accepted a $2m (£1.4m) bribe.

Phillip Tunoi denies taking money to rule in favour of Evans Kidero, whose election as Nairobi governor was challenged in 2014.

Mr Kidero, who became governor in March 2013, has also denied that he paid a bribe to influence the ruling.

Both men deny meeting the person who alleges that he was their intermediary and facilitated the bribe.

Chief Justice Willy Mutunga said he had ordered the inquiry into Geoffrey Kiplagat's allegations because of their "gravity" and "the public interest this matter has generated".

Suicide bombers have hit the north-eastern Nigerian town of Chibok during market day, killing at least 13 people, reports have said.

At least three attackers were involved, some of them female, witnesses said. More than 30 people were injured.

It is not yet known who was behind the attack.

But suspicion is likely to fall on militants from the Boko Haram Islamist group, who abducted more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok in 2014.

A town elder warned that the death toll could rise.

"The situation is now tense and there's so much confusion. It will take some time before we can be able to have a clearer picture of the casualties," Ayuba Chibok told the AFP news agency.

Tanzanian President John Magufuli suspended the head of a national electronic identification-card project and four other officials on Monday, opening the way for a corruption investigation into a public procurement process.

Magufuli, who took office late last year, has pledged to root out corruption and inefficiency in Tanzania. He has already sacked several senior officials, including the head of the government's anti-graft body, a senior rail official and the head of the country's port authority.

On Monday, the president said he had suspended the director general of the National Identification Authority (NIDA), Dickson Maimu, and other officials of the authority pending a graft investigation and an audit of the 179.6 billion-shilling ($82.20 million) that NIDA has so far spent on the project.

South African state pathologists are to carry out a post-mortem on a Nigerian man who died after being arrested near Johannesburg last Saturday.

A protest immediately followed, with 300 people surrounding the vehicle on which he died, local media report.

The allegation that he was suffocated is being investigated by an independent police complaints body.

Police say that he died after swallowing drugs as they were about to arrest him for possession.

With reports of bad health about Malawi President Peter Mutharika circulating in the country, his recent submission to the force of gravity has just made the situation worse.

South Sudan has missed a deadline to create a transitional government, after the president increased the number of provinces from 10 to 28.

The plan for a unity government was part of a peace deal in August to end the civil war which began in 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his then-deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup.

The two sides blame each other for violating the terms of the agreement.

Thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced since 2013.

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has returned from his annual month-long holiday and returned to work last Saturday, dispelling rumours that he had collapsed and died in Asia.

The AFP news agency quotes Zimbabwean state newspaper, The Herald, as having reported that Mugabe, who turns 92 next month, met Equatorial Guinea's President Theodore Obiang Nguema for over three hours on Saturday in Harare.

"President Mugabe and the First Lady Grace Mugabe arrived home last night (Friday), quashing false media reports that (he) had suffered a heart attack while on his annual leave in the Far East," The Herald said.

Veteran African National Congress (ANC) activist Denis Goldberg says the top hierarchy of the party is riddled with corruption and must be replaced. In a BBC interview, he alleged that the focus of the ANC leadership, locally and nationally on personal enrichment, was threatening freedom in South Africa.

"Corruption is a problem. I personally believe, and I will say it publicly as I do in South Africa, the members of the ANC need to renew the leadership from top to bottom.

"I'm not going to give names, because it's a problem throughout, from national, provincial and local government level," he said.

Somalia's security forces ended a deadly siege of a beachfront restaurant in the capital, with more than 20 people killed in the attack, a police official said Friday.

The security forces took control of the restaurant just before dawn, said Capt. Mohamed Hussein, speaking from the scene of the attack in Mogadishu.

It was not clear whether Hussein's report of more than 20 killed included the assailants. The armed group Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack at the Beach View Hotel on Mogadishu's Lido beach, an area with many restaurants and other upmarket establishments popular with business people.

International prosecutors at The Hague have accused former Ugandan rebel, Dominic Ongwen of ordering his men to kill, cook and eat civilians.

He is the first member of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to appear before the International Criminal Court.

Mr Ongwen has been accused of 70 war crimes and crimes against humanity.

His defence is likely to use his past as a former child soldier and kidnap victim as part of a plea for leniency.

Explosives three times as powerful as the bomb used in the 1998 US embassy attack in Nairobi were used against Kenyan troops last week, the army says.

A Kenyan contingent of the African Union force in Somalia was attacked by al-Shabab militants in el-Ade, in the south of the country.

Kenya has not said how many soldiers died, but al-Shabab puts the figure at more than 100.

The army has asked people to be patient while it investigates what happened.

In 1998 more than 200 people died when al-Qaeda attacked the US embassy in Kenya's capital, in one of the first operations launched by the jihadist group.

An influential monarch in south-west Nigeria, the Olubadan, or ruler of Ibadan land, has died at the age of 101, his son has confirmed to the BBC.

Oba Samuel Odulana Odugade, who ruled over Nigeria's third largest city Ibadan, died in his sleep last Tuesday evening, Nigeria's Punch newspaper quotes palace sources as saying.

An official announcement of the Yoruba king's death is expected later.

Although largely symbolic, the Olubadan still has strong regional influence.

Three people involved in last week's Islamist attack in Burkina Faso are still at large, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said.

The assault on a hotel in the capital, Ouagadougou, was claimed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Three gunmen were killed in Friday's operation, Mr Valls said. AQIM last Monday released their photos and names, media reports have indicated.

Four suspected terrorists in Kenya were killed during a dawn raid on a safe house in the coastal town of Malindi, police in the East African nation say.

The officers recovered arms, ammunition and a map of the area detailing targets for future attack, regional police Commissioner Nelson Marwa said.

Suleiman Awadh, on Kenya's most-wanted list, was among those killed, he said.

The Somalia-based al-Shabab Islamist militant group has launched a number of deadly high-profile attacks in Kenya.

French -Morccan photographer Leila Alaoui has died from injuries sustained in the Burkina Faso hotel attack, taking the death toll to 30. Ms Alaoui was taken to hospital but suffered a heart attack, human rights group Amnesty International has said.

She was carrying out work "focusing on women's rights" for the group.

The assault at a hotel in the capital, Ouagadougou, was claimed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).