Madagascan police on Friday called for candidates to exercise restraint as near-complete results were tallied from a first-round presidential election last week, with two former leaders looking set to go through to the run-off. With 96 percent of all polling stations counted, Andry Rajoelina was on 39.38 percent and Marc Ravalomanana on 34.19 pe ...

Abidjan, C ocirc;te d rsquo;Ivoire, 16 November 2018 ndash; The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank has approved its third equity investment of US$40 million in Africa Infrastructure Investment Fund (AIIF3), a closed-ended pan-African infrastructure fund managed by South Africa-based Africa Infrastructure Investment Managers (AII ...

Hundreds of journalists, many from countries where censorship is rife, have converged on the Tunisian capital for a conference on freedom of expression and new challenges facing the media. The three-day forum, which opened on Thursday, has attracted 600 journalists, bloggers, newspaper chiefs and media academics from Arabic and French-speaking c ...

The South African city of Cape Town, which nearly ran out of water this year, could beat future droughts by cutting down non-native trees including pine, acacia and eucalyptus, according to a study released Friday. The tourist hotspot was weeks away from turning off all household and business taps before strict rationing and much-needed rain ena ...

Australia have clearly toned down their sledging since a ball-tampering scandal broke, South Africa captain Faf du Plessis said Friday, but urged them not to totally sacrifice their confrontational approach. Coach Justin Langer and Test skipper Tim Paine have both pledged to change the win-at-all-costs culture that was rampant when Australian pl ...

A Murrayfield fortress awaits Rassie Erasmus on Saturday as South Africa's coach returns to the ground where he helped inflict Scotland's greatest home loss in his playing days. The former Springbok flanker plundered the second of 10 South African tries in a 68-10 victory in 1997 that remains Scotland's all-time record margin of defeat -- and in ...

South African captain Faf du Plessis said on Friday the Twenty20 World Cup in Australia in two years' time will be his last. The 34-year-old, who has led his country in two World T20 campaigns, in 2014 and 2016, is keen to play a third but will then step aside. The T20 World Cup in 2020 is something I'm really looking forward to. I think rig ...

The Pentagon will trim the number of US troops deployed across Africa as it concentrates more on countering threats from Great Power competitors Russia and China, officials said Thursday. Currently, about 7,200 US military personnel are based in dozens of African nations, with notable footprints in places like Somalia, Nigeria and Libya. Pe ...

The United Nations on Thursday launched what it called a global first to harness private-sector funding and expertise to help tackle humanitarian crises around the world. The Nigeria Humanitarian Fund Private Sector Initiative (NHF PSI) has been set up to strengthen the response to the effects of Boko Haram's Islamist insurgency in the country ...

Two former presidents of Madagascar look set to compete in a hotly-contested run-off election in December after partial results Thursday showed they were frontrunners in the first-round vote. With 80 percent of the ballots counted from last week's vote, Andry Rajoelina was on 39.63 percent and Marc Ravalomanana was on 35.42 percent -- pointing t ...

The lifting of UN sanctions on Eritrea is an unconditional win for the Red Sea state but no guarantee of change to domestic policies that have led to isolation and a refugee crisis. The UN on Wednesday lifted an arms embargo as well as travel bans, asset freezes and targeted sanctions imposed nine years ago to punish Eritrea for its alleged supp ...

African swine fever has spread rapidly to more than half of China's provinces despite measures to contain it, the government said, warning that a situation previously described as under control had become very serious. The disease has already caused a spike in pork prices in China since first emerging in August, and fuelled growing fears of a ...

African leaders are set to gather this weekend for a special summit aimed at pushing through long-debated reforms to their pan-continental body. The changes seek to streamline and empower the African Union -- an ambitious call for an organisation often seen as toothless and donor-dependent, and analysts say time for forging a deal is short. E ...

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is renewing his call for UN financing to shore up a regional force fighting an insurgency in the Sahel, despite opposition from the United States. Guterres said in a report to the Security Council seen by AFP on Wednesday that security had deteriorated rapidly over the last six months in the area between B ...

Italian far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Wednesday met dozens of African migrants, recently evacuated from Libya by the UN, and sought to reassure them that Italy is a welcoming, generous and supportive country . Salvini, who has been at the forefront of the country's hardline approach to immigration, met the group of 51 migrants, ...

The UN Security Council on Wednesday lifted sanctions on Eritrea following a landmark peace deal with Ethiopia and a thaw with Djibouti that have buoyed hopes for positive change in the Horn of Africa. The council unanimously adopted a British-drafted resolution lifting the arms embargo, all travels bans, asset freezes and targeted sanctions aga ...

The fin whale and mountain gorilla populations grew significantly due to efforts by conservationists to halt their descent towards extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said Wednesday. In an update of its Red List of threatened species, the IUCN said that a broad whaling ban had allowed the fin whale's global po ...

The UN Security Council will on Wednesday vote to lift sanctions on Eritrea following a landmark peace deal with Ethiopia and a thaw with Djibouti that have buoyed hopes for positive change in the Horn of Africa. Diplomats say they expect the council to unanimously adopt a British-drafted resolution that would lift the arms embargo and all trave ...

Rapid population growth and poor infrastructure have put two out of three cities in Africa at extreme risk of the threats posed by climate change, according to a new analysis released Wednesday. With UN figures showing 86 of the world's 100 fastest-growing cities are in Africa, experts warned nearly half of the continent's GDP was exposed to t ...

At the sharp end of conflict in Syria, in a schoolchild's bag in Kenya, whether fighting deadly diseases or studying forestry, the smartphone has become ubiquitous in just over a decade. This year, the number of users is expected to pass three billion, and AFP photographers have sampled how the phones have become a mainstay of lives around the w ...