African news : breaking news, features, analysis

The 103 schoolgirls released from captivity after being taken by Islamist militants Boko Haram in Chibok, north-east Nigeria, will go back to school in September, a minister has said.

Women's Affairs Minister Aisha Alhassan said the girls would be ready psychologically, a BBC report had said.

Tanzania has shut down one of the country's largest banking institutions, FBME, following charges of aiding the finance of terrorism by US authorities.

A statement from the central bank said it had revoked its licence.

One of the Chibok girls kidnapped by Islamist militants Boko Haram chose to stay with her husband instead of being freed, a spokesman for Nigeria's president has said.

She was set to be part of the group of captives who were released on Saturday.

The US has suspended $21 million (£16m) of funding to Kenya's Ministry of Health due to concerns over corruption and weak accounting procedures, the state department said.

But this amounts to a "small portion of the overall US health investment exceeding $650 million annually," it added

Zimbabwe is the most highly developed country in Africa after South Africa, President Robert Mugabe has said.

He denied that the country was a fragile state.

"We have over 14 universities and our literacy rate is over 90 [%] - the highest in Africa," he said, adding that the economy was improving.

Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari missed his third consecutive cabinet meeting on Wednesday because he needed to rest, according to officials, raising concerns about the state of his health.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo chaired the start of the session, which was open to the media. Buhari has been resting after treatment in the United Kingdom for an unspecific illness.

A total of 182 newly-signed agreements between China and Africa are estimated to cost $32 billion dollars, a Chinese diplomat in Africa, Dr  Ren  Xiaoping, has revealed.

An additional 61 agreements on projects have been signed in the past three months, summing up to $18.3 billion dollars.

Renowned Italian-born conservationist Kuki Gallmann has been shot and injured in an ambush at her conservation park in central Kenya.

The author of the best-selling memoir I Dreamed of Africa was airlifted to hospital for treatment.

Nigeria's airport in the capital, Abuja, has reopened six weeks after it was closed for urgent repairs.

Henrietta Yakubu, a spokesman for the aviation authority, said repair works were completed 24 hours ahead of schedule.

Ethiopia's state-affiliated Human Rights Commission says 669 people died, including 63 policemen, in the wave of anti-government protests that began in November 2015.

International rights groups have said hundreds of people lost their lives in clashes between police and protesters.

 Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have arrested two suspects in connection to last month's killing of two UN investigators, but one of the prisoners has escaped, according to a senior prosecutor.

The announcement was the first reported sign of progress in an inquiry into the deaths of American Michael Sharp and Swede Zaido Catalan, investigators monitoring UN Security Council sanctions against individuals and armed groups in Congo.

The World Food Programme said on Friday it was "horrified" to learn that three of its South Sudanese workers were killed in violence that claimed at least 16 lives earlier this week.

The three men, contracted as porters, appear to have been killed while trying to get to a WFP warehouse amid fighting between rebel and government troops near the western city of Wau.

More than 2,000 asylum seekers trying to reach Europe were plucked from the Mediterranean on Friday in a series of dramatic rescues.

An Italian coastguard spokesman said 19 rescue operations by the coastguard or ships operated by non-governmental organisations had saved a total of 2,074 people on 16 overcrowded rubber dinghies and three small wooden boats.

Zimbabwe's High Court judges have ruled that the use of corporal punishment on children at school and in the home is illegal - though the constitutional court still has to confirm the ruling.

At least 97 people are missing and believed to have drowned after their Europe-bound boat sank in the Mediterranean Sea on Thursday, according to the Libyan coast guard.

 Somalia's new president has declared the country a war zone and instructed the army to prepare a new offensive against the al-Qaeda linked group al-Shabab.

The announcement by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed on Thursday comes amid a worsening security situation as al-Shabab steps up deadly bombings in the capital since the country's new leader took office in February.

A car bomb blast on Wednesday at a Mogadishu restaurant killed at least seven people.

South Africa needs to "radically transform" its economy, the country's new finance minister has said.

The treasury has been seen for too long as belonging to "big business, powerful interests and international investors," Malusi Gigaba said.

"This is a people's government," he told his first news conference since President Jacob Zuma fired his respected predecessor, Pravin Gordhan.

About 20 Burkinabe soldiers on trial at a military tribunal over a failed raid on an arms depot last year have said they were tortured to extract their confessions.

Almost all of them said they had suffered beatings, humiliation and food deprivation at the police camp where they were held after their arrest following the raid in January 2016, for which they have been on trial since Tuesday.