Somalia's president is expected to announce a "state of war" against the al-Shabab extremist group after last week's truck bombing which killed 358 people in Mogadishu.

Europe needs to find a new way of working with Africa to prevent famines and other crises repeatedly occurring, Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney has said.

Twelve Ugandan soldiers were killed and seven others injured in an ambush by al-Shabab Islamic extremists in southern Somalia on Sunday, Uganda's military said.

Latest: Fighting continued through the night as the extremists fought heavily-armed soldiers.

The US has urged the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo and additional sanctions on South Sudan to pressure the parties to end the country's civil war - but Russia and China remain opposed.

At least seven people have been killed by a massive car bomb blast at a restaurant in Somalia's capital.

A suicide car bomber has detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at a security checkpoint near Mogadishu's international airport, killing at least three people, police said.

Brought up as the eldest of seven, Clár was always interested in words. 

More than 10m people, including an estimated third of a million newborn babies, are at risk from Ethiopia’s worst drought in half a century, Save the Children has warned.

‘Unheard-of’ idea discussed as 14 people die off coast of Turkey.

Good afternoon. Here’s all the news you need to know this lunchtime.

As the tyrant totters towards decrepitude, his country slides into famine. By Graham Boynton

With many Africans denouncing the International Criminal Court as ‘white man’s justice’, the trial of Chad’s former dictator in Senegal on charges of crimes against humanity offers the continent a chance to show it can hold its leaders to account.

At least 129 children were killed, with boys castrated and girls raped and some victims thrown to their deaths into burning buildings, during a government offensive against rebels last month in South Sudan, according to the UN children’s agency.

Burundi president Pierre Nkurunziza has made his first appearance in the capital since the attempted coup against his government last week.

The son of a Kenyan government official was one of the masked gunmen who killed nearly 150 people at a university last week, the interior ministry said, as Kenyan churches hired armed guards to protect their Easter congregations.

Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe has marked his 91st birthday by delivering a characteristically defiant speech in which he threatened to take over land and animal sanctuaries still in the hands of white people.

As Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe prepares for an “obscene” $1m birthday party, the European Union made it clear they would not be bringing any gifts to his table.

Cross-border attacks increasing as conflict spills across frontiers

Boko Haram staged an overnight assault on a border town in Niger and a suicide bomber detonated explosives near a market in the same town a few hours later, witnesses said.

Nigeria’s electoral commission is to postpone presidential and legislative elections for six weeks to give a new multinational force time to secure north-eastern areas under the sway of Boko Haram, an official has said.

Nigerian troops have repelled Islamic extremists who attacked from four fronts on Maiduguri, the biggest city in north-east Nigeria, with several civilians killed by aerial bombs, and grenades and mortar shells on the ground.

African leaders have appointed Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe as the new chairman of the 54-nation African Union.

Youths angry at the Nigerian government’s failure to fight Islamic extremists threw stones at President Goodluck Jonathan’s convoy in the eastern town of Jalingo, breaking windscreens and windows on several vehicles.

Sierra Leone is planning a house-to-house search for hidden Ebola cases in the capital and surrounding areas in an effort to stem the disease’s rampant spread, the government announced.

Authorities are having trouble figuring out how many more people are getting ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone and where the hot spots are in those countries, harming efforts to get control of the deadly outbreak, the UN’s top ebola official in West Africa said yesterday.

More than 5,000 additional healthcare workers are needed to fight Ebola in the three most affected countries in West Africa, the president of the World Bank has said.

A surge in new cases of Ebola in Liberia has seen the number of people believed to be infected pass 4,200, according to World Health Organisation figures.

The African Union is to send medical support teams to the West African countries affected by Ebola for a six-month mission.

At least 12 civilians have been killed in a suicide attack targeting African Union troops in Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region, the first serious assault by suspected Islamic extremists after the killing of al-Shabab’s top leader in a US air strike last week.

Ebola represents a threat to all humanity and an outbreak of the virus in five West African countries will likely spread to more, American officials warned.

Instead of lowering the rights of workers in Europe, we need to raise the living standards in emerging economies, writes former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

South Sudan’s president has agreed to meet his rival as soon as next week to jump-start peace talks that have been stalled for months, US secretary of state John Kerry said.

Fresh fighting has erupted in Bor, the contested capital of South Sudan’s Jonglei state, as rebels move to retake control from government troops.

A contingent of Rwandan peacekeepers will deploy to the Central African Republic, where nine other peacekeepers have been killed in less than a month.

Assailants armed with heavy weapons attacked the presidential palace and the residence of the Central African Republic’s embattled leader, but were pushed back.

NEARLY 500,000 people forced to flee their homes, more than 1m in desperate need of food, thousands abused, raped and executed, hundreds of children forcibly recruited to fight.

At least 13 people have died after a suicide bomber detonated explosives inside a restaurant in a city north of the capital of Somalia.

The chairman of the African Union has said the body will not allow a sitting head of state to be prosecuted by an international tribunal.

American extremist Omar Hammami, who was reported killed in Somalia after he fell out with the al-Shabaab rebel group’s top commander, switched a mundane life in Alabama for a spot in the global jihad, with a $5m (€3.75m) bounty on his head from the US.

Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe has declared his party will not yield its victory in disputed elections and proclaimed he has disposed of his main political rivals “like garbage.”

Zimbabwe’s neighbour Botswana has said disputed elections won by president Robert Mugabe did not meet acceptable standards and has warned southern African nations against violating commitments to democracy by accepting the result.

Prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai dismissed the election in Zimbabwe as a farce after his rival President Robert Mugabe’s party claimed a landslide victory that would secure another five years in power for Africa’s oldest head of state.