Jack Kim

Eritrea has complained to the U.N. Security Council about Kenyan allegations that it sent weapons to Islamist rebels in Somalia, calling for an independent investigation to judge the dispute.

Tunisia's Islamist-led ruling coalition will keep the country's ministers of defence and finance and the central bank governor in their posts when it announces a new government, a senior coalition source told Reuters on Monday.

More than a million people in Zimbabwe will require food aid between now and March 2012, a United Nations agency said on Monday, despite recent improvements in the country's grain production.

Nigerian politicians are funding members of a radical Islamist sect responsible for dozens of shootings and bombings this year in the north and capital of Africa's most populous nation, the state security service (SSS) said on Monday.

Libya's prime minister-designate said on Monday he was ready to name a government to steer the country to its first fully democratic elections but gave no details of a line-up that may involve a delicate power balance in a fragile new state.

Cairo police fought protesters demanding an end to army rule for a third day on Monday and morgue officials said the death toll had risen to 33, with many victims shot in the worst violence since the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

Standard Bank Group expects its clients to issue corporate bonds in excess of 10 billion rand over the next four months and is in talks with four offshore companies interested in inward listings in South Africa.

South African stocks ended flat on Wednesday with the weak rand supporting exporters and platinum miners such as Northam, which investors were starting to view as oversold.

South Africa's rand reversed its earlier losses against the dollar on Wednesday and government bond yields pulled back from the previous day's multi-week highs as local assets took a breather from a hammering brought on by global risk aversion.

Ghana will raise spending by over 12 percent to tackle poverty in a 2012 election year but will keep finances in check with higher state revenues, President John Atta Mills' government pledged in a budget on Wednesday.

Ghana will seek to boost revenues from its mining industry next year by hiking taxes, according to a text of the 2012 budget delivered to parliament on Wednesday.

The Paris Club of creditor nations said members agreed on Tuesday to reduce the Ivory Coast's foreign debt burden and said reforms underway should lead to further relief.

Libya has told Egyptians they will need visas to enter the country, Egypt's state news agency said on Wednesday, after Egypt imposed travel restrictions on Libyans during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.

Libya's wartime rebel prime minister said his country faces a lengthy and dangerous power vacuum where foreign powers may exploit rival militias on the streets and he called for a dramatic acceleration in plans for full elections.

Guinea's president declared late on Tuesday that the date for landmark parliamentary elections should only be set once there is agreement among rival parties on the timing, defusing a row that has already sparked deadly clashes.

A budget crunch in Swaziland, Africa's last absolute monarchy, has reached a critical stage with the government struggling to maintain spending on HIV/AIDS, education and the elderly, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday.

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe won praise on Wednesday as a great African figure and old friend of Beijing, underscoring China's commitment to boosting business ties to a leader shunned by Western governments.

South Africa's monetary policy will maintain its focus on hitting a 3-6 percent inflation target over the medium term but will remain sensitive to the domestic economic situation, Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus said on Tuesday.

A remote-controlled bomb blew up a police vehicle escorting a U.N. convoy in Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp near the border with Somalia on Tuesday, the second such incident in the camp this month.

South Africa's third-biggest listed clothes retailer, Mr Price, reported a 22 percent rise in first-half profit as above-inflation wage increases and decades-low interest rates lift consumer spending in Africa's biggest economy.

Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB) said on Tuesday first- quarter pretax profit climbed 11.3 percent year-on-year to 1.28 billion rupees on the back of loan book growth and said it would pay an interim dividend of 2.60 rupees per share.

The Kenyan shilling reversed early gains to close weaker against the dollar for the second straight session on Tuesday, hurt by telecom sector demand for dollars, while stocks extended losses to a fifth day.

Mauritius' Chamber of Agriculture revised its 2011 sugar production forecast up by 5 percent to 410,000 tonnes on Tuesday, saying the sugar cane crop had proven more resilient to poor rainfall than expected.

A sharp slowdown in world growth would increase the risk of recession in poorer countries, whose budgets have barely recovered from the last economic slump just two years ago, the IMF said on Monday.

Cholera has broken out in the world's largest refugee camp in Kenya, home to nearly 500,000 Somali refugees, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Uganda President Yoweri Museveni has indicated to parliament he is not likely to delay approval of Tullow Oil's long proposed partnership with Total and CNOOC further, because it would diminish his government's credibility in future negotiations.

Kenya's newly-constituted Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to rule on a date for next year's elections, stoking voter unease over moves by the government to amend a polling timeline already endorsed by a referendum.

Scores of residents fled a Somali rebel stronghold close to the capital on Monday after what appeared to be a night-time missile strike targeting a militant base.

Equatorial Guinea's proposed constitutional changes are on course to be approved after virtually all the results from 60 percent of the polling stations were in favour, according to a government statement on Monday.