[The Conversation Africa] Chigozie Obioma's Man Booker Prize nomination for The Fishermen follows by more than ten years that of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus in 2004. No other Nigerian writer has made it to the prize in between. The similarities between Obioma and Adichie are striking.
[RFI] At least one person has been killed in the first major outbreak of opposition-led violence which erupted in several towns, after the Constitutional Council released the official list of the 10 contenders running in the upcoming presidential elections.
[News24Wire] President Robert Mugabe on Friday appointed his nephew as Zimbabwe's new indigenisation minister in a move that will be closely analysed by would-be foreign investors.
[Premium Times] Many pilgrims from different countries were killed in Saudi Arabia Friday after a severe thunder storm caused the fall of a construction crane in Ka'aba, Mecca, witnesses said.
[New Times] The Governments of Rwanda and the United Kingdom, yesterday, signed a financing agreement worth £30.5m (about Rwf34 billion) to support basic education programmes.
[Nyasa Times] The Balaka First Grade Magistrate Court in eastern Malawi has ordered a 60-year-old man to pay a fine of K3, 000 or in default serve three months imprisonment with hard labour for insulting President Peter Muthatika and denigrating him.
[AI London] UN peacekeeper reform will only restore credibility if those who rape and sexually exploit the people they are supposed to protect are brought to trial and punished, Amnesty International said today.
[allAfrica] A bomb was exploded at a camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) near Yola in the northeastern Nigerian state of Adamawa. The Friday morning blast is reportedly the first attack on an IDP camp since the Boko Haram insurgency started 2009, uprooting more than two million people and killing and injuring several thousand more.
[SciDev.Net] Electro porcelain is widely used to insulate electric cables, in homes, on the railways, in telecoms systems - pretty much anywhere that uses electricity. Without it, humans would risk electrocution. Ghana currently imports all its electro porcelain - at great expense.