NAIROBI (Reuters) - Twenty-six years ago, Prosper saw Burundian soldiers take away his brother and nephew. Neighbours told him soldiers had also discovered his mother in a house where she had been hiding. None were ever seen again.

BERLIN/TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Germany and the United Nations will push rival Libyan camps and their foreign backers fighting over the capital to agree on Sunday to a truce and monitoring mechanism as first steps towards peace, diplomats and a draft communique said.

JIGJIGA, Ethiopia (Reuters) - Ethiopian farmer Ahmed Ibrahim batted empty water bottles at a swarm of desert locusts the size of his palms that were devouring his field of khat - the mildly narcotic leaf that is his family's main source of income.

LAGOS, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Nigeria's Access Bank plans to expand to Cameroon, Mozambique and Sierra Leone this year after acquiring a Kenyan lender, the bank's spokesman said.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - While drinking in a nightclub in Mozambique in 2015, Kamal Moukheiber had an idea: a luxury cigar made not in Cuba, but in southern Africa.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A Libyan military commander waging an offensive to capture the capital Tripoli is committed to a ceasefire, Germany said on Thursday, in an apparent advance for efforts to end a near-decade of turmoil in the North African country.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's public prosecutor's office said on Thursday it had ordered the release of five people detained following a raid on Turkey's state-owned Anadolu news agency office in Cairo, and the company confirmed one employee had been freed.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan's transitional authorities on Thursday appointed a new intelligence chief days after putting down an armed revolt by former agents linked to toppled ruler Omar al-Bashir, the sovereign council said.