Author: BBC

The body which runs Nigeria’s university-entrance exams has admitted to a “technical glitch” which compromised some results of this year’s tests, after nearly 80% of students got low grades. Students have complained about not being able to log in to the computers, questions not showing up and power cuts making it impossible to take the […]

US President Donald Trump has given members of South Africa’s Afrikaner community refugee status, alleging that a genocide was taking place in the country. Nearly 60 of them have arrived in the US after being granted asylum. The South African government allowed the US embassy to consider their applications inside the country, and let the […]

Makhosazana “Khosi” Dlomo, a 19-year-old, is breaking barriers in one of South Africa’s least diverse sports. The teenager is not only the country’s sole black participant in tent pegging – a traditional cavalry sport – but also the only registered black female competitor across sub-Saharan Africa. Often seen as an elite sport pursuit dominated by […]

Mali’s military junta has dissolved all political parties in the country amid a growing crackdown on dissent since the army seized power. “All meetings of members of political parties and organisations of a political character are dissolved across the national territory,” according to a presidential decree read out on state TV on Tuesday. It was […]

Paramilitary fighters appear to have opened a new phase in Sudan’s civil war after being driven from the capital, in a move which some experts have described as a “shock and awe campaign”. Just weeks after the army celebrated the recapture of Khartoum, its foe the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a series of unprecedented […]

Ulrich Janse van Vuuren has made it his passion to share and showcase some of South Africa’s best features with his legion of social media followers. The 38-year-old white South African often takes snapshots capturing scenes such as a cold Johannesburg morning, the purple Jacaranda trees famously associated with Pretoria or Cape Town’s popular beachfronts. […]

A US court has slashed the $18m (£13.6m) awarded to Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas in a defamation case to $500. Former Ghanaian MP Kennedy Agyapong was ordered to pay the huge sum after a jury found he had defamed Anas by calling him a “criminal”, and of being behind the murder of a […]

Kenya’s President William Ruto is a man of many nicknames. Deputy Jesus, El Chapo, Hustler and Chicken Seller are just some that he has acquired in recent years. As is often the case when people are given alternative monikers, some are affectionate but some are intended to mock and reflect a profound anger. A history […]

Chimpanzees in Uganda have been observed using medicinal plants – in multiple ways – to treat open wounds and other injuries. University of Oxford scientists, working with a local team in the Budongo Forest, filmed and recorded incidents of the animals using plants for first aid, both on themselves and occasionally on each other. Their […]

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called a group of 59 white South Africans who have moved to the US to resettle “cowards”, saying “they’ll be back soon”. The group of Afrikaners arrived in the US on Monday after President Donald Trump granted them refugee status, saying they faced racial discrimination. But Ramaphosa said those who wanted […]