Top Africa News

Senami, a 13-year-old girl, was purchased in Benin. “My father didn’t want to sell me, but someone put a spell on my uncle and he persuaded my father,” she said. Taken to oil-rich Gabon, Senami slaved as a domestic servant and later as a roadside peanut seller. With a mixture of rage and sorrow, she recounts her tragic life – ...

Nigeria’s President Buhari has set up an enquiry into the alleged ‘reckless’ spending by top officials of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) at the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Russia. The Super Eagles failed to equal their Brazil 2014 World Cup feat in Russia, following their 1-2 defeat from the struggling South American side, Argentina, on Tuesday. An official of ...

Uganda’s major telecom operators, including the local division of South Africa’s MTNGroup, said they will ask customers to pay a new government tax on social media accounts before they can access them. Last month, Uganda’s parliament passed new laws that introduced a new tax on use of so called Over The Top (OTT) services: communications platforms offered over the traditional telecom ...

Ethiopia has capped an extraordinary week in which its new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, pushed ahead with bold reforms undeterred by a grenade attack that sparked fears of backlash by hardliners. Just three days after a blast killed two people at a rally Abiy had addressed in the heart of the capital, the prime minister greeted a delegation from Eritrea, ...

Sophia, the famous artificial intelligence (AI) humanoid robot, arrived in Ethiopia on Friday, but was unable to have a scheduled dinner with the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, after a bag containing some of her parts went missing at the Frankfurt Airport, en route to Addis Ababa. Designed by Hong Kong firm Hanson Robotics, Sophia has been programmed to speak Amharic, ...

The group stage of the World Cup came to an end on Thursday, and up to 16 teams have left Russia following their elimination from football’s biggest tournament. While the biggest story of the tournament for Africa is the elimination of all five representatives at the group stage for the first time since 1982, there were many more attention grabbing ...

Gambian President Adama Barrow reshuffled his government on Friday, moving the leader of his ruling party from the foreign ministry to the position of Vice President, according to a statement. Gambia has seen a spate of protests in recent days as the country struggles to reduce debt and drive out corruption since Barrow defeated long-term incumbent Yahya Jammeh in a ...

The Moroccan Football Federation on Thursday complained to world soccer’s governing body FIFA over what it said were a series of refereeing mistakes in their World Cup Group B matches against Portugal and Spain which led to their elimination. The federation said the “serious referee errors” led to their early exit and that the video assistant referee (VAR) had been ...

Rwanda unveiled its first locally built car at Volkswagen’s new factory in the capital, Kigali, on Wednesday. The Polo is the first model being made at the site and the German automaker plans to reach annual production of 5,000 cars in the first phase, by also building its Passat, Tiguan, Amarok and Teramont models. Volkswagen, which is Europe’s biggest carmaker, ...

Nigerian actor and comedian Benjamin Nwachukwu, known to his fans as Shuga Shaa, has drawn a mixed reaction in the commercial capital, Lagos, for saying he has a relationship with a sex doll named Tonto Shaa. The pampered doll sports a wig polished fingernails and wears jewellery and expensive perfumes – and now has her own car. Shuga Shaa has ...