ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria's government held a long-delayed presidential election on Thursday, despite months of street demonstrations by protesters who view the vote as a charade intended to keep the ruling elite in power.

NIAMEY (Reuters) - Islamist militants killed 71 soldiers in an attack on a remote military camp in Niger near the border with Mali, an army spokesman said on Wednesday, in the deadliest raid against the Nigerien military in living memory.

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Polls opened in Algeria on Thursday for a delayed presidential election that is opposed by a mass protest movement which wants the vote put off until the entire ruling elite steps down and the military quits politics.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court said on Wednesday it has confirmed the charges brought by prosecutors against two men suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Central African Republic.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's state utility Eskom will work to stabilise the national power grid by the end of March in the wake of the country's most severe blackouts in a decade, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Wednesday.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Troubled South African power utility Eskom will work to restore network stability by the end of March, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Wednesday, after the country's most severe power blackouts in more than a decade this week.

MACHAKOS, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenya's farmers are grubbing up their coffee bushes to plant other crops as low prices and climate change drive small growers to the brink of collapse.

DAKAR, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Ghana's Springfield E&P said on Wednesday that it had discovered 1.5 billion barrels of oil and 0.7 trillion cubic feet of gas off the West African country's Atlantic coast.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - A Kenyan court granted bail on Wednesday to the Nairobi County governor charged with multi-million dollar corruption in one of the most high profile cases in the government's anti-graft push.

DAKAR, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Ghana's Springfield E&P said on Wednesday that it had discovered 1.5 billion barrels of oil and 0.7 trillion cubic feet of gas off the West African country's Atlantic coast.

ALGIERS (Reuters) - A big crowd of protesters marched through central Algiers on Wednesday to demand that a presidential election planned for Thursday be cancelled, chanting that they would not vote in a poll they regard as a charade.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Global consumers purchasing teak may be fuelling conflict in South Sudan, a research group said on Tuesday, warning that armed groups are benefiting from an unregulated logging trade worth tens of millions of dollars.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African state power utility Eskom scaled back power cuts on Wednesday, providing relief to mining companies that were able to restart operations hit earlier this week by the worst blackouts in a decade.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - At the opening of her country's defense at the World Court on an accusation of genocide, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi challenged whether events in Rakhine could fit that description.

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - The United States imposed sanctions on the leader of an Islamist rebel group and five others on Tuesday for perpetrating serious human rights abuses including mass rape, torture and killings in eastern Congo, the U.S. Treasury said.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia's federal police were deployed to universities across the country on Tuesday, the government said, as authorities sought to calm ethnic tensions which have claimed the lives of seven students in the past three months.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali security forces shot dead five Al Shabaab gunmen, who had killed three civilians and two soldiers during an attack on a hotel near the presidential residence in Mogadishu on Tuesday night, police said early on Wednesday.

BERLIN, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Telefonica Deutschland on Wednesday picked Nokia of Finland and China's Huawei to build its 5G network, seeking to get work moving even though Germany has yet to finalise security rules governing the industry.

BERLIN, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Telefonica Deutschland said on Wednesday that it had selected Nokia of Finland and China's Huawei as partners for its 5G network which it expects to start building in early 2020.

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Loon, a unit of Google's owner Alphabet Inc, which uses high-altitude balloons to provide mobile internet to remote areas, has signed a key access airspace agreement with Uganda.