Africa round-up: Wednesday 27 May

Muhammadu Buhari's term as president of Nigeria starts on Friday.

You've been telling us on Facebook and Twitter what should be his first priority.

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Osobhakhia Aziegbemhin says corruption should be top of the list "because this is why Boko Haram still exists", while Doris Ogobueze suggests that Mr Buhari should grant amnesty to members of the militant Islamist group.

Nakimuli Koyana Zue says the new president's priority should be to build an oil refinery.

"You cannot have oil in your country and a petroleum shortage at the same time. It's absurd," he adds.

A leading aid agency is moving a third of its staff from the Dadaab refugee camp in north-eastern Kenya because of the deteriorating security situation in the area.

Medecins Sans Frontieres said 42 of its staff would be relocated to the capital, Nairobi, as a "preventive measure, which will unfortunately have a direct impact on our ability to provide the much needed medical assistance to the refugees".

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The camp is in Garissa County, where militant Islamist group al-Shabab has been steeping up attacks.

Last month, 148 people were killed when the militants launched an assault on the Garissa University College.

More people are at risk of hunger in South Sudan than at any time since its independence four years ago, the UN World Food Programme has warned.

It says that about 40% of the population, or more than four million people, will require aid in the next few months.

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It blames the food shortages on the conflict between the government and rebel forces and the deepening economic crisis.

Commenters have been reacting on the BBC Africa Facebook page to the arrests of top Fifa officials accused of taking bribes.

Eddie Manda says: "A Sad Day? What nonsense! It's high time the sport had a shower to clean it up."

Solomon Mbubi adds: "It's all too little, too late."

Luis Philipe says: "A good penalty would be for the guilty to lose their jobs."

The American indictment alleges that senior government officials in South Africa arranged a a $10m (£6.5m) bribe to ensure that members of Fifa's executive committee backed South Africa, rather than Morocco, to host the 2010 World Cup.

These are devastating allegations for South Africa. Nelson Mandela had been instrumental in championing South Africa's successful bid.

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So far, no government officials here have commented, but the sports ministry said it was preparing a statement.

The indictment describes a separate incident when, it is alleged, a senior South African official travelled to Paris to hand over cash in $10,000 stacks - in a hotel room, to an unnamed person working for former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner.

Mr Warner issued a statement earlier saying he was innocent of any charges.

Six people have been arrested in Mozambique after 12 rhino horns were stolen from a huge cache seized from poachers about two weeks ago, a police spokesman says.

Four of those arrested are government employees, the spokesman told AFP news agency.

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The rhino horns were among Mozambique's largest ever find of illegal wildlife products. The equivalent of 200 dead elephants and rhino worth $6.3m (£4.1m) were stored under armed guard in a warehouse on the outskirts of the capital, Maputo, when the theft took place, AFP reports.

A spokesman for the Confederation of African Football (Caf), Junior Binyam, says his organisation reiterated its support to the Sepp Blatter presidential candidacy during a meeting in Zurich earlier on Wednesday.

Mr Binyam also commented on reports that Caf president Issa Hayatou was approached for questioning at the hotel in Zurich, but was not among the officials arrested.

"President Hayatou is at Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich having a rest... And for the time being Mister Hayatou is in Switzerland and has always being available to answer to any authority‎ for the related matter."

Ethiopia's ruling party has overwhelmingly won the country's election held on Sunday.

According to the figures released by the chairman of the national electoral board Merga Bekana, the opposition has not won a single seat.

All the 442 seats announced so far have been won by the ruling EPRDF and their allies. There are 547 seats in total.

The electoral board dismissed allegations by the opposition of intimidation, ballot stuffing and missing ballot papers.

Fifa's South African anti-racism campaigner Tokyo Sexwale has told the BBC's Milton Nkosi that "no stone should be left unturned" in the criminal investigations into corruption at football's world governing body.

Mr Sexwale was a member of Fifa's organising committee for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

He denied ever seeing any wrong doing himself.

"I used to be a member of the local organising committee. This was very clear - the books were very, very clean," he said in Johannesburg ahead of flying to Switzerland.

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The BBC's Salim Kikeke has sent these pictures of refugees in Lake Tanganyika stadium in the Tanzanian town of Kigoma catching a game of football.

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They have been staying at the stadium awaiting paperwork since earlier in the week

The refugees from Burundi are now being taken to Nyarugusu Camp by bus.

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A new party, Zimbabweans United for Democracy, has been formed.

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It says people are fed up with President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and opposition Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

A key figure in the new party is exiled Benjamin Paradza, a former High Court judge who fled the country after being found guilty of corruption.

Elections in Zimbabwe are due in 2018.

Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud says his country has become a safe haven for asylum seekers, reports Shabelle News.

People fleeing conflicts in their countries have been taking refuge in Somalia, which has high levels of security, he said.

Dozens of Yemenis have escaped the worsening conflict in the Middle Eastern state by crossing the Gulf of Aden in small boats to get to Somalia.

This is despite the fact that Somalia is battling an insurgency by militant Islamist group al-Shabab, and has not had a functioning central government since the overthrow of long-serving ruler Siad Barre in 1991.

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The Central African Republic's president has accused France of keeping her in the dark about allegations of child sex abuse by French peacekeepers in her country, the AFP news agency reports.

Catherine Samba Panza said she raised her concerns in talks she held today with France's President Francois Hollande in Paris.

"We insisted on being included in the process," she is quoted as saying.

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A court in Kenya has ruled that staff at a leading hospital had been negligent by failing to implant the contraceptive of choice in a woman's arm, even though she supposedly went through the procedure.

The plaintiff told the court that she and her husband already had two children and did not want more. So on advice of the Aga Khan hospital the mother went for an implant - a birth control method that would prevent conception for three years.

But a year later she discovered she was pregnant. She told the court that the unplanned pregnancy caused her emotional pain, financial strain and marital problems.

The judge said that the hospital was served the court papers but did not appear in court. He awarded the mother $5,000 (£3,250) for damages and $43,000 as living expenses for the child up to the age of 18.

A large group of MPs in Madagascar has just handed over a document to the High Constitutional Court, outlining the case against the president, reports the BBC's Martin Vogl from Antananarivo.

The MPs have voted to impeach President Hery Rajaonarimampianina, accusing him of violating the constitution and incompetence.

More details have been coming in of the speech by Madagascar's President Hery Rajaonarimampianina after MPs voted to impeach him.

"I am concerned about due process and respect for transparency. There is a suspicion of corruption," he said in a televised address to the nation.

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MPs said they sacked the president because he was incompetent and had failed to uphold the constitution.

"We have all seen the recent events concerning the nation's life, but I want to tell the people that I'm still here, our leaders are still working for you," Mr Rajaonarimampianina said in response, AFP reports.

The High Constitutional Court is to rule on whether parliament acted correctly by impeaching him.

A Kenyan court has ordered a hospital to pay a woman $43,000 (£28,000) for failed contraception, Kenya's Standard newspaper reports.

"Doing the best that I can with the material before the court I will award 20,000 shillings [$203, £132] per month for 18 years. In arriving at this figure, I have taken into account that the cost of living will probably keep rising as the years go by," the paper quotes the judge as saying.

It looks like David Rudisha's injury worries are set to continue - Kenya's world record holder has struggled with problems since winning gold at the London Olympics in 2012.

The runner has set his sights on gold at the World Athletic Championships in Beijing, China later this year after missing out on the event in 2013.

However, his season got off to a bad start on Tuesday evening in the Czech Republic at the Ostrava Golden Spike meeting as he failed to finish his first race of the year over the rarely contested distance of 600 metres due to what appeared to be a right leg injury.

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Madagascar's president has questioned whether votes by MPs to impeach him were properly counted, Reuters news agency.

In a radio and TV broadcast, Hery Rajaonarimampianina also called for an end to political wrangling.

"We need the support of the international community. We need stability to continue the efforts we have begun," he said.

Mr Rajaonarimampianina took office 16 months ago following a lengthy period of political unrest on the island nation.

As the US and Switzerland investigate corruption allegations involving the 2018 and 2022 football World Cup bids, The New York Times newspaper reports that African football chief Issa Hayatou was approached by Swiss police at a hotel in Zurich ahead of a meeting on Wednesday.

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It quotes a high-ranking soccer official as saying that Mr Hayatou, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) president, asked if he was being arrested; when told that he was not, he replied to the officers that he would not go with them and that if they wanted to arrest him they should do so in front of his colleagues at the Caf meeting scheduled for later.

Nigeria's military has sacked more than 200 soldiers this week for allegedly fleeing the battle-field when militant Islamist group Boko Haram invaded towns in the north-east last year, soldiers have told the BBC Hausa service.

One source said that about 4,500 soldiers had been identified for dismissal, as the military top brass tries to end "cowardice" in the army.

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The soldiers are being dismissed without appearing before a court martial.

They insist they are being unfairly targeted, and say they failed to fight because they lacked the weapons to match Boko Haram's firepower.

Research group Afrobarometer has issued an apology on its website for incorrectly reporting that nearly nine out of 10 Zambians think it is OK for a husband to physically abuse his wife.

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The correct results are the opposite - that 87% of Zambians disapprove of husbands physically disciplining their wives.

Researcher Fison Mujenja told BBC Newsday that "there was a serious transposition error in the labelling on our statistics such that it is in fact the opposite".

Tanzania's The Citizen newspaper reports on its front page that leading media owners have condemned the government's plan to introduce a controversial new law which will require private stations to air state news bulletins, and for all journalists to hold a diploma or degree.

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"These are not developmental laws," it quotes Reginald Mengi, the acting chairman of the the Media Owners Association of Tanzania, as saying.

"They are aimed at denying citizens their basic right to freedom of expression."

Many people did not believe Madagascar's parliamentarians would go through with their threat to impeach President Hery Rajaonarimampianina and put the country's relative stability at risk.

The parliamentarians anger has, however, grown consistently over the last few weeks. The president does not have a solid support base in parliament and it seems he and his supporters underestimated the level of discontent there.

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MPs say Mr Rajaonarimampianina has shown a lack of respect for parliament and its internal workings. The final straw for many has been his refusal to expressly rule out dissolving parliament, as he has the power to do under the constitution.

The impeachment request now goes to the Constitutional Court. Whichever way the judges decide, the political turbulence is likely to distract the government from the job of developing the Indian ocean island and could scare away investors and donors as well.

News that a Kenyan lawyer has offered a dowry for US President Obama's daughter has gone global.

Felix Kiprono says he is ready to pay 50 cows, 70 sheep and 30 goats for 16-year-old Malia Obama and wants to discuss the matter with her father when he visits Kenya in July.

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His interview first appeared in The Nairobian newspaper on Monday.

But it spread across the world today, with the Washington Times and the New York Daily News among the many news sites reporting it.

New regulations requiring biometric visas to get into South Africa could cut tourist numbers significantly, South Africa's Eye Witness News reports.

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Rob Collins of hotel group Sun International is quoted as saying that he is anticipating tourists numbers from China, India and Russia to be 60 or 70% down.

The regulations will be implemented on Monday.

Madagascar's President Hery Rajaonarimampianina is due to address the nation later today following a vote by parliament to impeach him, the BBC's Martin Vogl reports from Antananarivo.

He says the parliamentary decision is not final - the High Constitutional Court will ultimately decide whether the president should step down.

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Madagascar's parliament has voted to impeach President Hery Rajaonarimanpianina, reports the BBC's Martin Vogl from the capital.

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The vote is a big shock for Mr Rajaonarimanpianina and could cause serious instability in the Indian Ocean island, he adds.

MPs accused the president of violating the constitution and of incompetence by failing to implement promised reforms, the AFP news agency reports.

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Guinea-Bissau's parliament has unanimously agreed to honour former President Joao Bernardo Vieira as a hero of the country's independence movement, six years after his assassination, the AFP news agency reports.

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Parliamentary speaker Cipriano Cassama said Mr Vieira's remains would be transferred from a municipal graveyard to Bissau's prestigious Cemetery of Martyrs, while a statue would be installed in the garden of the National Assembly.

A 16-year-old boy is among dozens of people still being held without charge in The Gambia over a failed coup in December, a leading rights group says.

"The government has refused to acknowledge the whereabouts or even the detention of many of them, effectively holding them outside of the protection of the law," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement.

Those held are friends and relatives of suspected coup-plotters, it added.

They included the son of Bai Lowe, who fled The Gambia after the failed attempt to overthrow President Yahya Jammeh, HRW said.

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The European Commission is going to announce details of its controversial plans to spread tens of thousands of migrants who have reached southern Europe from Africa and the Middle East across the EU through a quota system.

A special memorial will be held in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa today for African migrants who have died trying to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean.

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The African Union (AU) has organised the memorial, saying it will also be an opportunity to focus on conflicts and poverty on the continent - two of the main reasons for the migration crisis.

Today's African proverb: When your grandmother tells you something, you don't run to your mother to ask if it's the truth. A Baoule proverb sent by Ameyedowo Carlos, Accra, Ghana.

Click here to send your proverbs.

Welcome to the BBC Africa Live page, where we will be bringing you news from across the continent, as it happens.