Africa (except North Africa)

NAIROBI, Oct 12 (Reuters) - The United Nations' migration agency has recalled a staff member identified by two U.N. sources in Addis Ababa as the head of its mission to Ethiopia over audio recordings containing criticism of senior U.N. officials.

In the recordings, two women who say they work for the U.N. in Ethiopia but do not give their names tell a freelance journalist that some top U.N. officials globally sympathise with forces from the northern Tigray region that are fighting Ethiopia's government.

KAMPALA, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- As Uganda is marking its 59th independence anniversary from British colonial rule, the African country is embracing a brighter future for development with China's assistance.

KINSHASA, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has confirmed a new Ebola case in the northeastern part of the country, five months after a previous Ebola outbreak was over.

While the country is still in a tough fight against COVID-19, DRC officials confirmed late Friday that a three-year-old boy died of Ebola on Wednesday in Beni, in the northeastern North Kivu province, an epicenter of the last Ebola outbreak that ended on May 3.

WINDHOEK, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Namibia's central bank governor Johannes Gawaxab has warned that vaccine hesitancy and trivializing COVID-19 can be disastrous to the country's economy which is expected to recover gradually in 2021 by 1.4 percent and improve to a 3.4 percent growth rate in 2022.

Speaking at a public lecture on Friday evening, Gawaxab said stepping up of vaccination is a crucial element of reviving the economy, adding that if the southwest African nation does not get this right, restrictions would continue while the economy would continue struggling.

KINSHASA, Oct 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Democratic Republic of Congo should renegotiate its US$6 billion infrastructure-for-minerals deal with Chinese investors, according to the draft of a report commissioned by a global anti-corruption body of governments, companies and activists.

The draft describes the deal that was first signed in 2008 as “unconscionable” and urges Congo’s government to cancel an amendment signed secretly in 2017 that sped up payments to Chinese mining investors and slowed reimbursements of investment in infrastructure.

BAMAKO, Oct 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Sixteen soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in an attack in central Mali on Wednesday, security and health officials in the war-torn Sahel state said.

   In a statement, Mali’s army said the troops had been the target of a “complex IED attack” — referring to an improvised explosive device — and then came under heavy gunfire shortly before 11:30 am.

   The army blamed the attack on suspected jihadists, and said that after pursuit, 15 of the assailants were killed and 20 motorcycles seized.

CONAKRY, Oct 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Guinea’s military president Colonel Mamady Doumbouya has appointed a former diplomat as prime minister in the transitional government.

Mohamed Béavogui, who once served as United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, was named on Wednesday through a presidential decree read on state broadcaster RTG.

Béavogui, as prime minister, will be the head of the transitional government which will be charged with steering the country to civilian rule.

OUAGADOUGOU, Oct 6 (NNN-AFRICANEWS) — Suspected jihadists killed 14 soldiers in an attack in northern Burkina Faso, the defence ministry said, in the latest bloodshed to hit the region plagued by Islamist violence.

“The military detachment of Yirgou” in the Centre-Nord region’s Barsalogho department was “the target of a terrorist attack” around 0500 GMT on Monday, junior defence minister General Aime Barthelemy Simpore said.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has condemned the killing by unknown gunmen of a nurse it employed in Zamfara in northwest Nigeria, an area at the epicentre of a surge in violent crime in which thousands have been abducted.

MSF said nurse Mohammad Hassan, 37, was killed on Oct. 2 when armed men opened fire on the public transport vehicle in which he was travelling.

Addis Ababa, Oct 4 (AP-PTI) Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been sworn in for a second five-year term running a country in the grip of a nearly year-long war.

Abiy's Prosperity Party was declared the winner of parliamentary elections earlier this year in a vote criticised and at times boycotted by opposition parties but described by some outside electoral observers as better run than those in the past.