Ivory Coast 39;s President Alassane Ouattara has refused to comment on the acquittal on crimes against humanity of his predecessor Laurent Gbagbo at the International Criminal Court while insisting investigations would continue. No reaction from me, it 39;s an ongoing trial..., Ouattara said in an interview with Radio France Internation ...

An Ethiopian military helicopter crashed inside a United Nations compound in the disputed Abyei region between Sudan and South Sudan, killing three crew members and injuring 10 passengers, the UN said in a statement Sunday. The statement said the helicopter was carrying 23 passengers when it crashed on Saturday inside the compound of the UN Inte ...

The International Monetary Fund on Sunday warned governments to gear up for a possible economic storm as growth undershoots expectations. The bottom-line -- we see an economy that is growing more slowly than we had anticipated, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told the World Government Summit in Dubai. Last month, the IMF lower ...

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said Sunday that excellent basic healthcare that would prevent easily treatable but deadly conditions was achievable even in Africa 39;s poorest nations. The good news about health is that by spending modest amounts on the prioritised areas, you can get phenomenal benefits, he told AFP on the sidelin ...

Addis Ababa, 9 February 2019, (ECA) - ldquo;The strategic cooperation between the African Union and the United Nations is a fundamental asset for the work of the United Nations in the world, rdquo; said Ant oacute;nio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG). He made the remarks during a joint media stakeout with the Chairperson o ...

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, February 9, 2019 (ECA) - Power relations in the world will remain male-dominated if girls and women do not strongly get involved in technological professions, United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres said Saturday. Speak ...

Thirteen candidates have been cleared for the March presidential vote in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros, the Supreme Court announced Saturday, barring the main challengers of President Azali Assoumani. Nineteen candidates had registered for the March 24 election and of those given the go ahead, only Azali is backed by a party. The other ...

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Saturday that a slew of peaceful elections and truces in Africa were signs of a wind of hope on the continent. He was speaking on the sidelines of an African Union summit in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, where heads of state from 55 member nations will meet from Sunday. This is a mom ...

Persisting trade tensions between economic superpowers the United States and China could shave 0.7 percent from Africa's GDP in 2019, a senior official at the African Development Bank (AfDB) said on Friday. Hanan Morsy, director of the AfDB's macroeconomic policy department, made the prediction on the sidelines of an African Union meeting in Add ...

Human Rights Watch urged Moroccan authorities on Friday to free a man handed jail time for calling for protests over the navy's shooting dead of a 22-year-old student. Soufian al-Nguad posted the call on Facebook after the navy opened fire on a speedboat attempting to carry migrants to Spain in September, killing Hayat Belkacem. A court in th ...

Medical services in Guinea are on alert after a man died from Lassa fever, health officials said on Thursday, with some 80 people being monitored for the deadly disease. Lassa fever is caused by a haemorrhagic virus which belongs to the same family as Marburg and Ebola. The virus was found in a 35-year-old man from the southwestern town of Ki ...

Swiss prosecutors said Thursday they were dropping charges of financial wrongdoing against Teodorin Obiang Nguema, the son of Equatorial Guinea's authoritarian leader, but were confiscating luxury cars as part of the case. Obiang, 50, and two other individuals had been facing prosecution for money laundering and misappropriation of public asset ...

Six suspects have been arrested over the killing of an investigative journalist in Ghana who helped to expose corruption in African football, police said on Thursday. Ahmed Hussein-Suale, part of a team that carried out an undercover investigation, was gunned down as he returned to his home in the Accra suburb of Madina on January 16. The sho ...

Hundreds of Sudanese protesters rallied Thursday in downtown Khartoum and other districts of the capital in support of fellow demonstrators detained in the weeks of rallies against President Omar al-Bashir 39;s iron-fisted rule, witnesses said. The latest protest came after Bashir acknowledged that Sudan 39;s controversial public order la ...

Several parties to the Central African Republic's peace accord have yet to sign the much-trumpeted deal, a minister said on Thursday. The accord was signed in the capital Bangui on Wednesday by militia leaders and President Faustin-Archange Touadera, but its contents have not been disclosed. You cannot publish a document until everyone has s ...

The head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has publicly acknowledged the persistent problem of sexual abuse of nuns by priests. His admission, aboard the papal plane returning from to Rome from a trip to the United Arab Emirates, is the first time the Church has confirmed such abuse. The Pope 39;s acknowledgement came only after he was ...

Central African Republic plunged into bloody sectarian violence in 2013 with the overthrow of president Francois Bozize by mainly Muslim rebels, prompting a counter-offensive by Christian militias. Here is a snapshot of the main events. Coup On March 24, 2013 rebels from a Muslim-dominated coalition called Seleka -- which means a ...

AFP is further developing its global fact-checking operations through a major new contract with Facebook covering the Middle East and North Africa. Arabic is being added to fact-checking in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese that is carried out by AFP teams in 16 countries throughout the world. The articles produced in this new collabo ...

US President Donald Trump is due on Wednesday to unveil a controversial candidate to lead the World Bank, a choice that could spark a revolt against US dominance of the institution. The White House has confirmed to fellow Group of Seven nations that Trump will nominate US Treasury official David Malpass, a person familiar with the matter told AF ...

Five nations waging a battle against jihadism in the Sahel asked the UN Tuesday for money and other aid to help tackle a terror scourge that killed 14 people in the region just a day earlier. Leaders of the so-called G5 Sahel -- Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger -- gathered in the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou seeking to beef up th ...