JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's cash-strapped public broadcaster will get a 3.2 billion rand ($211 million) government bailout, but will need to meet preconditions including identifying assets to sell, the communications ministry said on Friday.

YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Cameroon's President Paul Biya said he will drop charges against 333 prisoners arrested for their alleged roles in a two-year separatist uprising, but rebel leaders dismissed the move as a political stunt and pledged to keep fighting.

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc has announced it removed hundreds of pages, groups and accounts on its platforms for "coordinated inauthentic behavior" linked to three operations in Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Nigeria.

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigerian police plan to acquire stun guns and revise their rules of engagement in an effort to curb the use of deadly force, the inspector general of the force said on Thursday.

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania denied on Thursday it was withholding information from the World Health Organisation (WHO) on suspected cases of Ebola, saying it was not hiding any outbreak of the deadly disease in the country.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Clashes between regional special forces and a minority ethnic group have killed at least 20 people in the past five days in Ethiopia's northern state of Amhara, a local political official said on Thursday. 

BAMAKO (Reuters) - The death toll from attacks on two army bases in central Mali has risen to 38 from 25, defence minister Dahirou Dembélé said on state television late on Thursday.

KADUNA (Reuters) - Gunmen kidnapped six schoolgirls and two staff members from a boarding school in northern Nigeria on Thursday, police said.

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan security personnel on Thursday detained six supporters of pop star and presidential hopeful Bobi Wine for wearing red berets, a banned symbol of his "People Power" pressure group, a spokesman for the movement said.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - The Nigerian army released 25 children on Thursday after clearing them of suspected ties with armed Islamist groups in the country's restive northeast region, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa and Nigeria signed 30 trade and cooperation agreements on Thursday, weeks after a wave of violence against Nigerian nationals in Johannesburg and Pretoria had strained relations between Africa's top two economies.

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan security forces are hunting for five Eritreans who disappeared from a hotel in Uganda where their team was playing in a soccer tournament, a Ugandan official said on Thursday.

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Nearly 600 refugees left Tanzania to return to their homes in neighbouring Burundi on Thursday, the United Nations said - the first batch in a mass repatriation that some migrants fear could force them back against their will.

NEW YORK/KAMPALA (Reuters) - Somali refugee Ramlo Ali Noor will never be reunited with her 16-year-old son in her new home in Columbus, Ohio.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The United States announced on Wednesday it had re-opened its embassy in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, nearly three decades after it was shut down, underscoring deepening ties between the two nations amid persisting threats from Islamist group al Shabaab.

BAMAKO (Reuters) - Hundreds of wives and children of Malian soldiers demonstrated on Wednesday in the capital Bamako, demanding information from the government after at least 25 soldiers were killed and 60 went missing in attacks by suspected jihadists.

LONDON (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell said on Wednesday that it had been informed by the U.S. Department of Justice that it had closed its inquiry into Shell over the 2011 $1.3 billion acquisition of a Nigerian offshore oilfield.

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - A landslide at a shuttered gold mine in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least 16 people on Wednesday, the provincial governor said.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Prince Harry said that Africa's embrace had helped him cope with the death of his mother, Princess Diana, as he and his wife Meghan championed job creation and entrepreneurship on the continent on the final day of their 10-day tour.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) said it had filed a court case on Wednesday against manganese and chrome producer Samancor Chrome relating to alleged fraud.