At least 249 rhinos were killed the first six months of this year in South Africa, the environment minister said yesterday, partly pushed by the easing of lockdown curbs that increased movement of poachers. 

The United Nations children’s agency said on Friday that more than 100,000 children in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray could suffer life-threatening malnutrition in the next 12 months, a 10-fold increase to normal numbers.

Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara and long-time rival Laurent Gbagbo hugged on Tuesday at their first meeting in over a decade, part of efforts to ease political tensions in the West African country.

At least half a million children face acute malnourishment in drought-hit southern Madagascar, causing irreversible damage to their growth and development, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef warned Monday.

Opponents of Tunisia’s President Kais Saied, who sparked a crisis by ousting the premier and suspending parliament, yesterday challenged him to hold new elections instead of building an “autocratic regime”.

A boat carrying African migrants capsized off Libya’s coast Monday, leaving at least 57 people presumed dead, a UN migration official said. It was the latest disaster in the Mediterranean Sea involving migrants seeking a better life in Europe.

Heavy security was deployed outside Nigeria’s federal high court yesterday as the trial of a leading separatist extradited last month resumed, an AFP journalist at the scene reported.

The DR Congo’s Nyirangongo volcano has released large amounts of ash some two months after its eruption, sparking concerns for local residents’ health, experts said on Sunday.

A man accused of attempting to stab Mali's interim President Assimi Goita last week has died in hospital while in the custody of security services, the government said in a statement on Sunday.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday she has agreed to a request from Turkish authorities to accept the return of a New Zealand citizen accused of having links to the Islamic State, and her two young children.

Tunisia's president dismissed the government and froze parliament on Sunday in a dramatic escalation of a political crisis that his opponents labelled a coup, calling their own supporters to come onto the streets in protest.

Algeria will manufacture the Chinese coronavirus vaccine Sinovac locally, the government announced Saturday, in a country hit by rising cases and constrained by a patchy inoculation rollout.

Ethiopia’s Amhara region yesterday called on all armed residents to mobilise for battle against rebels from conflict-hit Tigray, calling it a “survival campaign”, state media reported.

Kidnappers who raided a boarding school in northern Nigeria earlier this month released 28 children on Sunday but another 81 remain in captivity, according to a pastor involved in the negotiations for their release.

At least six Cameroonian soldiers were killed and four wounded during an attack by Islamist insurgents on an army outpost in the far north of the country, state broadcaster CRTV said on Saturday.

Russia dispatched nearly 100 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Cuba, the defence ministry said yesterday, following unprecedented street protests over the

Australia yesterday avoided having the Great Barrier Reef listed as an endangered world heritage site by UNESCO, despite extensive climate change-fuelled damage to the ecosystem’s corals. 

Rioting in South Africa this month has claimed 337 lives, the government said Thursday, marking a further jump in the death toll from the 276 announced the previous day. 

Nigeria has received six of 12 turboprop light attack aircraft from the United States to help fight mounting insecurity, its airforce said.

Tunisia’s government stumbled deeper into crisis over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, after premier Hichem Mechichi fired the health minister amid skyrocketing cases in the North African country.