JOHANNESBURG, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Uber launched in Ivory Coast's commercial capital Abidjan on Thursday, part of its expansion into African markets with low levels of car ownership and limited mass transport.

DALOA, Ivory Coast, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Ivorian cocoa farmers have grown more concerned about the 2019/20 main crop as diseases known as black pod and swollen shoot spread in cocoa plantations, farmers and exporters told Reuters on Thursday.

LONDON (Reuters) - The global vaccine alliance GAVI said on Thursday it had agreed to fund and create a $178 million stockpile of Ebola vaccines for emergency use in outbreaks.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Landslides in Burundi have killed at least 26 people and injured seven, while 10 more people remain missing, the Security Ministry said on Thursday.

DAKAR (Reuters) - Up to 57 people have died after a ship from Gambia carrying around 150 migrants sank off the coast of Mauritania on Wednesday, the U.N. migration agency said.

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Proposed changes to South Africa's constitution to allow land to be expropriated without payment will be officially published next week, potentially setting the stage for a conflict between the government and commercial farmers and the opposition.

BANJUL (Reuters) - The genocide case brought against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) - the first of its kind initiated since the 1990s - may not have happened at all but for a scheduling conflict.

GENEVA (Reuters) - A measles epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 5,000 people this year, many of them young children, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

ABUJA (Reuters) - A Nigerian court on Thursday ordered the state security agency to release within 24 hours a Nigerian activist and former presidential candidate who has remained in detention despite having been granted bail.

HARARE (Reuters) - A court in Zimbabwe on Thursday appointed Robert Mugabe's daughter to identify assets left by the late former leader so they can be distributed to his beneficiaries, his lawyer said.

ATHENS (Reuters) - Pirates have kidnapped 19 crew members from a crude oil tanker off Nigeria, an official with the ship's operator said on Thursday.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Failing state-owned airline South African Airways (SAA) will enter a business rescue process, a deputy minister and the parliamentary committee conducting oversight of the airline said on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and Sudan plan to begin exchanging ambassadors after a 23-year gap, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday in the latest sign of warming relations between the two countries.

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South African Airways (SAA) is likely to get a 2 billion rand ($136 million) boost from the government and another 2 billion from existing lenders as it enters rescue proceedings from Dec. 5, a minister said on Thursday.