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Suicide bombers in Gwoza, northeastern Nigeria killed at least 18 people on Saturday (Jun. 29).

The first suicide bomber detonated an explosive device during a marriage celebration at about 3 p.m., Barkindo Saidu, director-general of Borno State Emergency Management Agency, told reporters.

“Minutes later, another blast occurred near General Hospital,” Saidu said, and then there was a third attack at a funeral service by a female bomber disguised as a mourner. Children and pregnant women were among those killed.

The death comprised adult males, females, and children, according to the radio station.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the the attacks, but Gwoza is in Borno state, which has been heavily impacted by an insurgency launched in 2009 by Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group.

From its origins in the state, it has threatened the security of the Nigeria and destabilized the Lake Chad region.

In the past, Boko Haram has used women and girls in suicide bombings, prompting suspicions that some from the many thousands that they have kidnapped over the years. The resurgence of suicide bombings in Borno raises significant concerns about the security situation in the region.

The Cairo meeting attended by President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and EU commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen culminated in the signing of deals worth billions of dollars.

The conference comes on the back of a $7.9 billion funding package agreed in March to support the north African country battle an economic crisis made worse by rising debt, inflation and currency shortages.

A series of small and medium term loans constitute the large majority of the package.

In exchange, Cairo must step up energy exports to Europe and action on irregular migrants. The EU has agreed similar deals with Tunisia, Mauritania and Libya, angering rights groups.

With huge natural gas deposits, the European Union sees Egypt as a key player in its efforts to replace Russian energy.

In his remarks, President Sissi said that Egypt was a prime destination for European investment. At the conference, european companies signed over 20 deals worth over 40 billion Euros, the EU chief said.

Kenyan President William Ruto has said that the country will resort to more borrowing to plug a growing budget deficit after the rejection of the finance bill that would have increased tax revenue.

Following deadly protests last week, Ruto declined to sign the bill and wrote to parliament to withdraw it.

During a TV interview Sunday, Ruto said that the failure of the bill had hurt government efforts to ease the country’s debt burden. About 60% of Kenya’s revenues go to servicing debt.

He said east Africa’s largest economy will seek one trillion Shillings ($7.6 billion) from lenders to pay for social services and other programs.

The new taxes would have raised about $2.7 billion.

Last week, law makers overwhelmingly approved the finance bill shortly before protestors stormed parliament and set sections of it on fire.

The protestors say the government should cut corruption and waste instead of raising taxes. President Ruto has promised to reduce the budget of the presidency and to eliminate non-essential expenditure.

Kenya’s debt stands at over $80 billion. A large chunk of it is denominated in foreign currency.

The interrogation of Samuel Eto’o comes ten months after he was accused of ivolvement in match-fixing by players.

The President of Cameroon’s Football Federation had a session with the disciplinary panel of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) on Tuesday.

There was no word on how he pleaded. The questioning took place behind closed doors.

The allegations contend that Eto’o irregularly helped one club to rise to the top of the Cameroonian League two years ago. His accusers say they have supplied evidence pinning the former Barcelona player to CAF.

The match-fixing charge is not the only one bothering Eto’o.

His accusers also lodged a compliant with FIFA citing unethical behavior over an ambassadorial deal he secured with a sports betting company.

If found guilty, Eto’o faces no less than a lifetime suspension from football.

Eto’o was elected head of Cameroon’s football federation in December 2021.

Mauritanians head to the polls on Saturday in an election which shines a spotlight on the country’s deep divisions, as incumbent President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani seeks a second term amid a regional security crisis and ongoing allegations of human rights abuses taking place in the country.

Ghazouani, from an Arab Mauritanian family, is a former army chief who came to power in 2019 following the first democratic transition in the country’s history.

Last year, his El Insaf party scored a crushing victory in the legislative election, taking 107 of the 176 seats in the National Assembly.

Though Ghazouani is widely expected to win the election, his main opposition is Biram Dah Abeid, a Black anti-slavery activist who has accused him of gross mismanagement of the country. Abeid says Ghazouani has cultivated a culture of “corruption, the pillage of wealth, and repression of the population” ahead of his last campaign rally on Thursday.

“The population is hungry. The population is thirsty. Unemployment has ruined the youth. This is why the youth have emigrated in the thousands or tens of thousands,” he said.

Abeid says he is against the agreement Mauritania holds with the European Union to crack down on migration to Europe, calling it an agreement “that will serve neither the European Union, nor Mauritania.”

Mauritania’s agreement with the EU and similar agreements with North African countries have been criticized for alleged human rights abuses against migrants that have occurred under them.

Mauritania is no stranger to human rights abuse accusations, as it was the last country in the world to abolish slavery in 1981. But the practice continues, human rights groups said, with around 149,000 people in modern slavery in this nation of less than 5 million, according to the 2023 Global Slavery Index.

“Slavery is a central question in Mauritania,” Abeid said from his party headquarters in the capital Nouakchott.

“Given the status of slavery in society, the status of a slave, the status of a free man, and especially the status of the men who hold these slaves. It’s ingrained in Mauritanian values, which is why slavery continues to plague Mauritania in such a massive way,” he said.

Abeid himself is descended from slaves. His grandmother was a slave “until her death,” he said, and his father later married a slave and saw his wife and their two children sold before his eyes.

“My father was driven by the fight against slavery and he left this legacy. I promised him that I would fight against slavery all my life, and that is what I am doing,” he said.

The Cameroonian government announced on Wednesday the adoption of measures to caution the country from the resurgence of Covid-19 cases, observed in some European, Middle Eastern, and African countries.

According to a statement from the Cameroonian Minister of Health, all travelers arriving from foreign countries shall be required to systematically fill out identification forms at airports.

Testing is being reintroduced at airports, but it is currently prioritized for travelers returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Measures that were previously implemented at the peak of COVID-19 infections are being reinstated, including wearing masks in case of flu-like symptoms, hand hygiene, and regular disinfection of common areas.

Finally, the government states that it has the necessary capacity to detect cases and provide free care throughout the territory.

The first Covid-19 case was recorded in Cameroon in March 2020. According to the Ministry of Public Health, this pandemic has caused the death of 1,974 people out of a total of more than 120,000 infections in the country.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Friday that Parliament will open for its next term on July 18 as he remains locked in negotiations with other parties to form a Cabinet well before then amid rifts in the new governing coalition.

The talks to seal the final details of a multi-party government and appoint a Cabinet have been going on for two weeks and have been marked by disagreements between Ramaphosa’s African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance, the second biggest party, over how to divide up ministerial positions and portfolios.

Correspondence between the two former political foes has been leaked, showing the tensions.

In one of the letters, Ramaphosa wrote to DA leader John Steenhuisen accusing his party of “moving the goalposts” by increasing its demand from six Cabinet positions to eight, and thereby jeopardizing the coalition agreement. The DA says the ANC had reneged on a promise to allow it to take control of the important Department of Trade and Industry.

Ramaphosa and Steenhuisen have also had face-to-face meetings in recent days.

The issues underline the warnings from analysts that a coalition bringing the ANC and DA together to govern Africa’s most industrialized country would be complicated. The ANC had been the ruling party and the DA the main opposition and its fiercest critic for more than 20 years before the May 29 election that created an unprecedented situation for South African politics. They have starkly different ideologies.

The ANC lost its dominance and the parliamentary majority it had held ever since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994 in last month’s election and has been forced to share power for the first time. It won 40% of the vote and the DA 21%.

Although eight smaller parties have also joined the coalition, which is being called a government of national unity, the ANC and the DA are the key players and its success relies on them finding common ground.

South African media has reported that the DA may be on the verge of walking away from the power-sharing agreement, but ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula one of his party’s lead negotiators moved to dispel that Friday by writing on social media site X that the parties were “almost done” with the final agreement. “It will be done as promised,” he added, and would be “in the best interests of all South Africans.”

South Africa’s currency and investor confidence strengthened after the ANC and DA signed a preliminary agreement to work together in a coalition on June 14. That deal also allowed Ramaphosa to be reelected by lawmakers for a second term as president just hours later with cross-party support.

Both parties had said the coalition would be a new era of political unity that would help solve the country’s vast socioeconomic problems, which include some of the highest rates of inequality and unemployment in the world. But the delay in announcing a Cabinet and a new government getting to work has eroded some of the optimism.