Africa (except North Africa)

ABUJA, April 14 (Reuters) - Nigeria will next year conduct its first census in 17 years to try to accurately survey its population, estimated at more than 200 million people and the largest in Africa, the head of the national population agency said on Thursday.

Censuses are controversial in Nigeria because rival ethnic and religious groups have in the past tried to use them to assert their numerical superiority and claim a larger share of oil revenues and political representation.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The number of coronavirus cases and deaths in Africa have dropped to their lowest levels since the pandemic began, marking the longest decline yet seen in the disease, according to the World Health Organization.

In a statement on Thursday, the U.N. health agency said COVID-19 infections due to the omicron surge had “tanked” from a peak of more than 308,000 weekly cases to fewer than 20,000 last week. Cases and deaths fell by 29% and 37% respectively in the last week; deaths decreased to 239 from the previous week.

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Agricultural workers in the east and Horn of Africa are preparing for their most severe drought in 40 years, as authorities warn that higher temperatures and less than normal rainfall was recorded by weather agencies in March and April this year.

WINDHOEK, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Namibia has suspended imports of live poultry, birds and poultry products from the United States after outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza, the Namibian Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform said in a statement on Wednesday.

Namibia's veterinary services said it has, with immediate effect, suspended the import and transit movement of live poultry, birds, raw poultry products, live ostriches and ostrich products from the U.S.

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Climate activists are urging more banks and insurers not to back the controversial $5 billion East African Crude Oil Pipeline that is primed to transport oil from the Hoima oilfields in Uganda to the Tanzanian coastal city of Tanga.

Influential climate activists Vanessa Nakate and Hilda Nakabuye have lent their support to opponents of the pipeline citing the need for Africa to stay away from fossil fuels.

NAIROBI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- More than 29 million people are facing food insecurity in the Eastern African region, a regional bloc said in a new report launched in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Monday.

The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) said eastern Africa is facing the very real prospect that the rains will fail for a fourth consecutive season, placing Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia into a drought of a length not experienced in the last four decades.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Prolonged rains and flooding in the Durban area of South Africa have claimed the lives of at least 45 people, damaging the port, major highways and surrounding areas in KwaZulu-Natal province, according to local officials.

South Africa’s military has been deployed to Durban and the surrounding eThekwini metropolitan area on Tuesday to assist with rescue operations as residents flee flooded areas.

JOHANNESBURG, April 10 (Reuters) - Former South African President Jacob Zuma is pursuing private prosecution proceedings to remove the lead prosecutor in an arms deal corruption trial after failed legal challenges, his foundation said on Sunday.

Last month the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) torpedoed Zuma's latest bid to have lead prosecutor Billy Downer taken off the case after accusing him of bias and leaking of confidential information to a journalist in contravention of the national prosecution act, among other complaints.

OUAGADOUGOU, April 6 (Reuters) - Burkina Faso's former president Blaise Compaore was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for complicity in the 1987 murder of his predecessor Thomas Sankara in a coup, a military tribunal ruled on Wednesday.

The charismatic Marxist revolutionary Sankara was gunned down in the West African nation's capital Ouagadougou at the age of 37, four years after he took power in a previous putsch.

Two of Compaore's former top associates, Hyacinthe Kafando and Gilbert Diendere, were also sentenced to life imprisonment.

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo, April 5 (Reuters) - A United Nations peacekeeper from Nepal was killed on Tuesday in an attack by suspected militia members in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the U.N. peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO, said.

The attackers were believed to be members of CODECO, one of many militias operating in eastern Congo amid longstanding conflict over land and resources, MONUSCO said on Twitter.