Africa Live: 15-19 October 2018 as it happened

Izeowayi Izaza Victor is the winner of the BBC's inaugural Pidgin language essay competition.

The 21-year-old student beat the other entries on the question: Is Africa ready ready for political leadership?

“When I first heard about the competition, I took it as a personal challenge. This is the first essay I have written in the language I love," Izeowayi said.

His essay touched on political apathy, lack of unity and lack of proper education.

The essay writing series is aimed at contributing to the development of the written form of the Pidgin language amongst young people across West Africa.

"Even more exciting is the fact that the BBC Pidgin essay writing competition is a concept that has not only come to stay, but is poised to further entrench the culture of writing in Pidgin," Adejuwon Soyinka Head of the Pidgin Service said.

Izeowayi Izaza VictorCopyright: Izeowayi Izaza Victor

AFPCopyright: AFP

The government of Burundi has accused a prominent opposition leader of organising a plot to kill the president.

In a television announcement, the security ministry said that Pierre-Celestin Ndikumana, of the main opposition coalition, had masterminded a plan for three other people to assassinate President Pierre Nkurunziza, other top officials and two members of parliament.

There are moves to lift his immunity from prosecution.

Mr Ndikumana said the accusations were a crude attempt to intimidate him. With the government clamping down on the opposition, there is a widespread climate of fear in Burundi.

It's three years since President Nkurunziza said he would seek a third term, an announcement that sparked civil unrest leading to more than 1,000 deaths and nearly 500,000 displaced.

The former powerful president of Ethiopia's Somali region attempted to escape police custody on Friday by climbing through a window ahead of a court appearance, state-linked Fana Broadcasting Corporate reports.

Abdi Mohammed Omer had been kept in a separate office for safety reasons, Fana reports, but he attempted to escape by smashing a window.

"In his escape attempt, he broke a window before choking a member of the police force," news agency Reuters reports quoting a police statement.

Mr Omer however denied the accusation.

He was forced to resign on 6 August and arrested weeks later after violence broke out in the regional capital, Jijiga.

At least 20 people died and thousands fled Jijiga as mobs looted properties owned by ethnic minorities and burned down several Ethiopian Orthodox churches during the outbreak of violence in August.

Mr Omer is alleged to have overseen widespread rights abuses including torture, rape and killings during his 13-year rule.

He, however, denies the allegations.

Thousands of genetically modified mosquitoes are set to be released in a village in Burkina Faso.

It is part of a project aimed at wiping out the malaria-carrying insects.

It will be the first time genetically engineered mosquitoes have been released in any African country.

Video produced by Trystan Young and Daniel South.

Police in Tanzania say kidnapped billionaire Mohammed Dewji was taken by men driving a car that had arrived from "a neighbouring country", news agency Reuters reports.

Police Inspector General Simon Sirro declined to say which country the car came from, saying he did not want to cause a diplomatic row.

However, he said the owner and driver of the vehicle had been identified.

Mr Sirro also showed reporters a picture of the car, saying the images had been taken by CCTV cameras before the vehicle went out of view.

Mr Dewji was taken by masked gunmen in Dar es Salaam on Thursday last week. The abduction took place outside a swanky gym in the affluent Oysterbay district.

The kidnappers fired shots in the air before driving away with the billionaire, witnesses said.

His family has offered a 1bn Tanzania shilling ($440,000; £330,000) reward for information that leads to his rescue.

Mr Dewji, locally known as Mo, is credited with turning his family business from a wholesale and retail enterprise into a pan-African conglomerate.

His company, MeTL, has interests in textile manufacturing, flour milling, beverages and edible oils in at least six African states.

Emmanuel Ibeawuchi is captain of Nigeria's amputee national team. He lost his foot in a traffic accident, but was delighted to discover people like him playing the sport.

His team, nicknamed the Special Eagles, have qualified for the Amputee Football World Cup 2018, which starts next week in San Juan de Los Lagos, Mexico.

But due to a lack of financial backing, the Nigerian team has started a crowd-funding campaign to raise the necessary finances.

Video producers: Joshua Akinyemi and Yemisi Adegoke

Uganda, the only African nation to have ever competed at the Lacrosse World Championships, is hoping to promote the sport across the continent.

Head coach Peter Ginnegar says his players can compete physically with the world's best but in years to come.

Watch more in this BBC African Sport video:

The Libyan foreign minister has said his country opposes a European Union plan to set up assessment centres for migrants outside the EU's territory.

The plan was drawn up by EU leaders last June, as Italy called for more controls on migration flows.

But the Libyan minister, Mohamed al-Taher Siala, has now told an Austrian newspaper that all North African countries reject the idea of so-called disembarkation platforms on their territory.

He said that instead, Libya was working with its southern neighbours to reinforce their common borders.

In July President Emmanuel Macron of France said the EU's plan for the centres in North Africa would not work unless those countries led the initiative.

A Kenyan policeman is being hailed a hero for his quick reaction in arresting armed robbers in the capital, Nairobi, on Thursday.

The video of Joash Ombati apprehending the two men, who reportedly robbed a man of Kenya Shillings 732,000 ($7,200; £5,500), has been shared online, with many praising him.

Mr Ombati told the Star newspaper that he was on a lunch break when he saw a man being thrown from a moving car while shouting "thief, thief".

The policeman jumped into a taxi and gave chase.

He shot at the car, but it only stopped after it hit a rock. Mr Ombati fired again at the car forcing the two men to surrender.

His work was not finished, however, because a man on a motorcycle then grabbed the money. Mr Ombati told the paper he again gave chase and recovered the cash.

Police later said that only $4,000 was recovered.

Mr Ombati told the Star that he was proud of his action.

He said: "I'm happy because I helped a Kenyan.This is a blessing to me. Whenever I do such deeds I feel very satisfied."

A video showing an elephant being hunted in a conservancy in Namibia is being widely shared online, with many expressing their anger.

The video shows two men aiming their rifles at a herd of elephants.

One of the men can be heard saying: "Hit it between the eyes," before they both open fire hitting one elephant said to be a bull.

That elephant then collapses prompting the rest of the herd to charge at the hunters. They avoid being crushed by shouting at the elephants.

The video is three or four years old, according to a Namibia-based qualified big game hunter, Corné Kruger.

"I don't know why it only surfaced now," he told News24.

Game hunting is legal in Namibia.

Watch the video below:

Here's a sample of some of the reactions on Twitter:

AFPCopyright: AFP

Cameroon's Constitutional Council is set to announce the results of the 7 October presidential election after rejecting all 18 petitions calling for the partial or total cancellation of the vote.

The last of the petitions to be thrown out was that of Joshua Osih, the candidate of the main opposition party SDF. He wanted the whole election cancelled on the grounds that voting did not take place in the English-speaking regions as a result of the secessionist uprising there.

Mr Osih said it would be a form of “apartheid” if the president were to be voted in without the participation of parts of the country.

While the council thought the complaint had some merit, it was thrown out for lack of evidence.

The same argument was used to dismiss the petition from ex-government minister Maurice Kamto, President Paul Biya’s main challenger.

With all petitions dismissed, the constitutional council is now set to declare the final results of the election by 22 October.

The electoral code requires that results are announced within 15 days of the vote.

The president-elect will be sworn in within 15 days after the results are announced.

President Biya, in power for 36 years and seeking a seventh term, is largely expected to win, and this would make him Africa’s longest serving leader, after Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang Nguema.

AFPCopyright: AFP

Rights group Amnesty International has welcomed the decision by Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court to outlaw a public order act that prohibits demonstration without authorisation from the police.

"For far too long, this repressive piece of legislation has been used to systematically harass, arbitrarily detain and torture people seen as opposition supporters or those trying to expose human rights violations. The fact it is no longer on the statute books is cause for celebration," the Executive Director of Amnesty International Zimbabwe, Jessica Pwiti, said:

The judges said the Public Order and Security Act (Posa) had been open to abuse by the state.

Judge Rita Makarau said the Posa did not "pass the test on fairness, necessity and reasonableness" and an authoritarian government "could lawfully invoke these powers without end".

Several civic groups had challenged the law in May on the grounds that it had been used unfairly to thwart freedom of assembly as guaranteed by the constitution.

Ms Pwiti said the judgement would create an environment that allows peaceful assembly, but added that police must also ensure that they respect the law.

AFPCopyright: AFP

Algeria's Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia has ordered a ban on civil servants wearing niqabs (full-face veils) at work, citing reasons of identification.

Mr Ouyahia sent an order to regional government chiefs to implement the directive.

"[Civil servants] must... comply with the rules and requirements of security and communication within their department, which require their systematic and permanent physical identification, particularly in their place of work," he is quoted as saying by privately-owned Tout Sur Algerie (TSA) website.

Although most Algerian women don't wear the face veil, the decision is likely to be criticised by the conservative Salafist minority, who follow a strict version of Islam.

The North African country has been split between moderate and more radical forms of Islam since it was plunged into years of civil war in 1992, when a military-backed government cancelled elections that an Islamist party was poised to win.

AFPCopyright: AFP

Cameroon's Constitutional court has rejected 18 petitions calling for a repeat of the 7 October presidential election which opposition parties said was marred by fraud.

The move will likely clear the way for President Paul Biya to be confirmed the winner before Sunday, correspondents say.

The 85-year-old has ruled the central African nation for 36 years.

The election was held amid a tense atmosphere in the North-West and South-West regions where Anglophone separatists had vowed to disrupt the election.

The crisis can be traced to October 2016 when teachers and lawyers in the English-speaking regions took to the streets to protest against the imposition of French in schools and courts.

But those protests soon took on a political dimension, with thousands of residents taking to the streets on 1 October last year to declare the independence of a new country they called "Ambazonia".

The government cracked down in response.

Hundreds of people have been killed - at least 420 civilians, 175 military and police officers, and an unknown number of separatist fighters.

More than 300,000 people have also been forced to flee their homes, according to the International Crisis Group.

Read more:

• Cameroon's 'absentee president'
• The rebels fighting for independence

Our proverb of the day:

Quote Message: If an enemy learns your dance, they will dance it the crooked way." from Sent by Merkeb Zersenay, Las Vegas, US.

If an enemy learns your dance, they will dance it the crooked way."

Click here to send us your African proverb.

Welcome back to BBC Africa Live, where we will bring you the latest news and views from around the continent.

That's all from the BBC Africa Live page. Keep up-to-date with what's happening across the continent by listening to the Africa Today podcast or checking the BBC News website.

A reminder of Thursday's wise words:

Quote Message: If you want to get more, you will lose everything." from A Somali proverb sent by Hassan Musse, Galkayo, Somalia

If you want to get more, you will lose everything."

Click here to send us your African proverb.

And we leave you with this photo of a fisherman on a lake in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo:

A charity whistleblower has confronted UK International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt as she announced her plan to tackle sex abuse among aid workers at a summit in London.

"We do not need fancy new systems, we do not need technology. We need systematic change," Alexia Pepper de Caires, formerly with Save the Children, said.

Ms Mordaunt stopped her speech to listen to the protester.

She outlined the UK government's plan to work with Interpol to prevent "sex predators" from getting jobs as aid workers, following a series of abuse scandals to hit the sector.

The Guardian paper posted the encounter on YouTube:

See earlier post

A Facebook live video showing Tunisia’s Minister of Youth and Sports, Majdouline Cherni, going unannounced into the offices of the ministry's employees, demanding to see what they are working on “right now”, has been widely shared on social media.

She is heard criticising staff for delays in tackling files.

“Does it take a month to provide analysis?” Ms Cherni asks in one instance.

“This would take a week,” she adds.

In another case, she tells an employee to remove an ashtray because smoking is not allowed in offices.

The video has had more than 100,000 views.

Some people praised her for trying to achieve efficiency, but criticism was rife.

One person commented that she had the right to carry out checks but she did not have the right to film people without their permission, while another said the minister wanted to show Tunisians she was working, but she had "done absolutely nothing for sports in Tunisia”.