News

Voting began on Wednesday but in parts of the country continued up until Saturday, following a lack of ballot papers in some places as well as malfunctioning technical equipment. Is Namibia going to elect its first female leader? Namibia is a geographically vast nation with about three million people, around half of whom are registered […]

Tanzanian opposition youth leader Abdul Nondo has been found after being dumped at a beach, less than a day after he was reportedly kidnapped in the main city of Dar es Salaam. His party, ACT Wazalendo, says Nondo was severely beaten and injured and has been taken to hospital. The party’s deputy chairperson, Isihaka Mchinjita, […]

A power cut plunged Zimbabwe’s parliament into darkness as Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube was finishing his budget speech. The lights flickered and died, leaving top officials like President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga and members of parliament sitting in the dark. The outage is a symptom of Zimbabwe’s ongoing crisis, with daily 12-hour blackouts driven […]

One of Zambia’s most popular actors and filmmakers Owas Mwape broke a social taboo by admitting that one of his young sons has an addiction to drugs when he posted a recent appeal for advice on Facebook. The 52-year-old told the BBC he wanted to use his standing as a public figure to open the […]

Mahmoud is a cheeky teenager who beams the biggest of smiles even though he lost his front teeth in the rough and tumble of kids’ play. He is a Sudanese orphan abandoned twice, and displaced twice in his country’s grievous war – one of nearly five million Sudanese children who have lost almost everything as […]

Votes are being counted in Namibia in what could be the most competitive election since independence from white-ruled South Africa 34 years ago. The poll was marred by logistical issues with voting continuing for an unscheduled second day on Thursday in some areas. Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah is seeking to become the country’s first female president. She […]

The former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was once described as the world’s most powerful woman. Here she talks to the BBC’s Katya Adler about Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat – and how she handled Donald Trump. Angela Merkel led Germany for 16 years. She was there during the financial crisis, the 2015 migrant crisis and, […]

At least one person has died and three others have been injured after a cargo plane crashed near Vilnius airport in Lithuania in the early hours of Monday. A search is currently under way for a fourth person. The plane, operated for DHL by the Spanish cargo airline Swiftair, crashed near a house as it […]

The renowned anti-apartheid writer and activist Breyten Breytenbach, jailed for his beliefs in South Africa in the 1970s, has died aged 85, his family said. He passed away in his sleep, with his wife Yolande by his side in Paris. The dissident poet, novelist and painter was “an immense artist, militant against apartheid, he fought […]

Chioma is adamant that Hope, the baby boy she is holding in her arms, is her son.  After eight years of failed attempts to conceive, she sees him as her miracle baby. “I’m the owner of my baby,” she says defiantly. She’s sitting next to her husband, Ike, in the office of a Nigerian state […]