VORACIOUS caterpillars are ravaging plantations and smallholdings in Cameroon’s Eastern and Southern Provinces, eating almost all the plants and crops they reach, the agriculture ministry said on Monday. “Not a single green plant is spared, from bananas to cocoyams to groundnuts,” said a plantation owner reached by telephone in the Ngomedzap region, about 100km south […]

DIMENSON Data (Didata) said on Monday it and Internet consultant Proxicom In have agreed to merge in a deal involving South Africa’s biggest IT company paying an aggregate $448 million for the US firm. Under the deal Didata would give Proxicom shareholders $7,50 in cash for each share. The purchase price would be $378-million after […]

TWENTY-five people are feared dead after their boat sank off the east coast of Madagascar last week, including 18 players and officials from a local soccer club and two Frenchmen, officials said on Monday. The boat sank on Thursday with some 41 people on board, including nine crew members, while it was travelling from Soanierana-Ivongo […]

A RWANDAN nun testified on Monday that a former fellow nun at a Rwanda convent encouraged refugees who had sought shelter there to leave in order to spare the nuns’ lives during the country’s 1994 genocide. Sister Gertrude, former mother superior of the convent, and Sister Maria Kisito are accused of premeditated murder and crimes […]

SIERRA Leonean rebels said their positions had again been attacked by a government militia as they arrived in Freetown on Monday for landmark talks to secure a ceasefire and a timetable for disarmament. The talks in Freetown are a follow-up to a meeting in Nigeria earlier this month, when both sides agreed to keep to […]

SARAH BOSELEY, London | Monday The South African government has no intention of buying the antiretroviral drugs that can keep people with HIV/Aids alive in spite of its courtroom victory over pharmaceutical companies that were trying to block the import of cheap medicines, says its health minister. In an interview with the Guardian, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang […]

YOWERI MUSEVENI was sworn in on Saturday for a final five-year term as Uganda’s president in the presence of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and four other African leaders. In his first announcement after taking the oath of office, the Ugandan president said that on Gaddafi’s advice he was ready to restore diplomatic relations with neighbouring Sudan, […]

SOUTH African men are “too big” for standard condoms issued by the government, according to a national survey of prostitutes, The Sunday Times reported. “Most (prostitutes) complained that these things break because they come from the Far East and they’re too small for local men,” said researcher Ted Leggett, from the University of Natal. He […]

KENYAN authorities on Monday dropped a treason charge against an opposition member of parliament accused of calling for the killing of President Daniel arap Moi and instead charged him with incitement to violence, Kenyan state-run radio reported. Maina Kamanda, MP for the Starehe constituency in Nairobi and member of the Democratic Party, had 10 days […]