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.

CAIRO/BRUSSELS - (Reuters) - After war broke out again in Libya early last year, a special team of EU diplomats in Tripoli was forced back to neighbouring Tunisia to do what they had been doing for several years: wait.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Lesotho Prime Minister Thomas Thabane announced his intention to resign on Thursday, the South African Broadcasting Corporation said in a news alert.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The European parliament has passed a resolution condemning Burundi for restricting freedom of expression and violating human rights ahead of elections due in May this year.

LONDON (Reuters) - A British prosecutor launched a fresh attempt on Thursday to confiscate tens of millions of pounds stolen from an oil-producing state in Nigeria by its former governor, who was convicted of laundering his loot in Britain.

DAKAR (Reuters) - A new law in Senegal that criminalises rape has come too late for one young woman. She was raped last year and is now trying to put her life back together with a baby.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)on Thursday said a record 45 million people in the 16-nation Southern African Development Community are gravely food insecure following repeated drought, widespread flooding and economic disarray.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey is beginning to send troops into Libya in support of the internationally recognised government in Tripoli, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday, days before a summit in Berlin which will address the Libyan conflict.

LISBON (Reuters) - Africa's richest woman and Angola's ex-first daughter Isabel dos Santos expressed interest on Thursday in running for the presidency despite an asset freeze and accusations of diverting more than a billion dollars of state money.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Islamist militants released three aid workers and other civilians in northeast Nigeria who had been held hostage since late December, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in the country said on Thursday.

PARIS (Reuters) - France's armed forces minister said on Wednesday she would travel to Washington in the coming days to discuss U.S. military support to French forces in the Sahel region, amid growing concern of a U.S. exit from the area.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ministers from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan agreed on Wednesday to reconvene in Washington later this month to finalize an agreement on a giant hydropower dam on the Blue Nile that sparked a diplomatic crisis between Cairo and Addis Ababa.

LONDON (Reuters) - British low cost airline easyJet said it would restart flights between the UK and the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in June following an almost five-year break.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said on Wednesday it was too early to say that a ceasefire in Libya had collapsed after Khalifa Haftar, commander of eastern Libyan forces, failed to sign a binding truce at talks this week.