African news : breaking news, features, analysis

A 31-year-old mother has been arrested by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) of Nigeria for concealing 430 grammes of heroin in her vagina at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos.

South Africa's power utility Eskom has ordered four of its executives to step aside while it investigates the problems at the firm.

Ivory Coast's former first lady, Simone Gbagbo, has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for her role in the violence that followed the 2010 elections.

Liberia has released its last Ebola patient and begun its countdown to being declared Ebola free.

Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS), according to an audio statement.

At least three people, including a UN peacekeeper, have been killed in an attack in the northern Mali town of Kidal, according to a witness and a security source.

Three bombings rocked separate targets in Maiduguri, Borno State capital on Saturday, killing at least 33 people, witnesses and a local official have said.

A court in Tanzania has sentenced four people to death for the murder of an albino woman who was killed so her hacked-off limbs could be used in magic, officials said Friday.

Five people have been killed in a machine-gun and grenade attack on a nightclub in Mali's capital, Bamako.

Seven ex-government officials in Kenya have been charged in connection with a multimillion-dollar corruption scam.

The government of South Sudan has warned that the imposition of any US-backed sanctions would be counter-productive and harm the peace process.

Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group already blamed for numerous horrific attacks in West Africa, posted a graphic video online Monday showing the apparent beheadings of two men who the group said were suspected spies.

Hundreds of boys in South Sudan have been kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers, the United Nations children's agency says.

The vice-president of Sierra Leone has put himself into quarantine after one of his bodyguards died from Ebola.

A Zimbabwean nanny was jailed for 22 years for the murder of a 10-month-old baby she stuffed into a drawer "for crying too much" before she settled down to watch TV.

President Goodluck Jonathan made a brief visit to Adamawa State yesterday to see for himself some of the recaptured towns from Boko Haram in the state.

Niger Delta ex-militant leaders, yesterday said that the remarkable achievements made by the Nigerian armed forces, the Joint Multi-national Task Forces in their present onslaught against Boko Haram in the North-East region, have proved President Goodluck Jonathan’s critics wrong.

A Sierra Leonean who worked with children orphaned by Ebola has died of the disease himself.