Melinda Gates reviews "However Long the Night," by Aimee Molloy, which tells Molly Melching's story and the story of the Senegalese communities where she works.

Kenyan writer tells Eliza Anyangwe why west's notion of 'development' and its jargons fail to capture the reality of Africa

Mary Rusimbi: After intensive lobbying by a coalition of women's rights groups, gender equality is climbing the agenda in Tanzania at a key time

There is room for change even in a culture you respect, says Maanda Ngoitiko, a leader who has challenged the status quo of what it means to be female in a pastoralist Maasai society.

Ngoitiko grew up in the traditional, male-dominated pastoralist community of Soit Sambu village in northern Tanzania, helping with the needs of her family and their cattle. To escape forced marriage and in hopes of continuing her education, a 15-year-old Ngoitiko ran away from home. After finishing secondary school in Dar es Salaam with the help of a pastoralist community group, she received sponsorship from the Irish embassy to further her education in Europe.

Ngoitiko then returned to northern Tanzania to work for a Maasai community organization, but she realized there was an urgent need for an organization led and managed by Maasai women, dedicated solely to addressing their strategic and practical needs

Masons in Timbuktu on Friday began rebuilding precious mausoleums that were destroyed by Islamist guerrillas when they controlled the Malian city before a French intervention, the UN cultural body said.

Al Qaeda-linked militants destroyed 15 of the northern city's mausoleums, important buildings that date back to the golden age of Timbuktu as an economic, intellectual and spiritual centre in the 15th and 16th centuries, Unesco reported in June last year.

The UN body said on Friday that the reconstruction was due to last one month, and would be carried out by a local group of masons.

The Ministry of Youth and ICT (MYICT), Motorola Solutions and UNDP organized the completion to help young people establish the usage of mobile technologies to enhance human development in various sectors including Governance, Education, Health, Agriculture and Gender.

15 young innovators in the Information Technology sector (IT), who are passionate about finding solutions to pressing development issues, have been selected. They were tasked to generate a mobile application that is dynamic and applicable among the Rwandan population using mobile technologies.

A young Tanzanian woman tells of how she was lured away from her village by the promise of work in Dar es Salaam only to be sold into sexual slavery. She talks about her ordeal and recounts how she has since received help from a support group formed to give a unified voice to Tanzanian women

Sierra Leone's ex-president and war-time leader Ahmad Tejan Kabbah has died at the age of 82 after a long illness.

He died on Thursday afternoon at his home in the capital, Freetown, with his wife and close family members at his side, reports say.

In a statement, Sierra Leone's government said Mr Kabbah's death was an "irreparable loss".

Mr Kabbah was praised for his leadership during and after Sierra's Leone's decade-long civil war.

Sierra Leone's former president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, widely credited with returning peace to the shattered west African nation after years of brutal civil war, died on Thursday aged 82.

Judges rule directive amounted to a roadside declaration.

A decree issued by President Jomo Kenyatta four decades ago and which dictated who was allocated the much-sought after prime beach plots along the Kenyan Coast was non-existent and opaque, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

The Appellate Court observed that although it was being scrupulously enforced, the decree has never been anchored in any legal regime and cannot be traced to any legal grounding for evaluation and rationale.