West Africa

Gabon on Sunday announced a ban on opposition leaders, including former top African Union official Jean Ping, from leaving the country in what it said was a "temporary, administrative measure".

Almost 100 inmates escaped from a prison in the Ivory Coast on Sunday, the latest in a string of jail breaks in the west African country, officials said.

Suspected Boko Haram militants killed 18 people in northeast Nigeria on Friday, according to local witnesses and officials, the latest in an escalating number of lethal attacks in the region.

Cholera has broken out in northeast Nigeria at a camp for people displaced by the eight year conflict with Boko Haram, aid group Médecins Sans Frontières said on Thursday, bringing disease to communities already underfed and living in squalor.

Britain is to halve the amount of money it gives in humanitarian aid to Nigeria over the next few years, says the international development minister.

Gunmen ambushed and killed four soldiers and a civilian in Nigeria's oil-rich south, local sources said Wednesday, breaking months of uneasy calm after unrest over the distribution of the country's oil revenues.

A court in Togo has jailed opposition supporters who participated in a protest calling for an end to the Gnassingbe dynasty.

The president of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday chaired his first cabinet meeting since returning from his sick leave in London.

Gunmen abducted 11 people from a bus as they travelled close to Nigeria's southern oil hub Port Harcourt late on Monday, a passenger who escaped from the attack told AFP.

A Nigerian lawmaker has said that the country's President, Muhammadu Buhari is not getting accurate information about the activities of Boko Haram and its capacity to carry out attacks in parts of the West African nation.