Violence has forced thousands of people to flee their homes in South Sudan's Jonglei state - an area which has suffered repeated communal clashes.

The medical charity, Doctors Without Borders, says it is treating victims of gunshot wounds who have walked through the night to reach Pibor town, where 5,000 people are seeking shelter.

It says thousands more who fled into the bush are unable to get medical help.

Correspondents say little is being done to address the violence as politicians continue to negotiate over government positions.

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The Cameroonian army has denied media reports that nine soldiers have been arrested in connection with a military operation last month in which more than 20 civilians were allegedly killed.

Defence officials initially said five civilians died after being accidentally caught in crossfire between the military and separatist rebels in the western village of Ngarbuh.

However human rights groups said Cameroonian soldiers and armed ethnic Fulani went from house to house shooting dead the residents, including 13 children. President Paul Biya ordered an investigation into the incident after several countries, including the US and France, condemned the killings.

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Figures show African Airlines have lost 400 million dollars since the outbreak of the coronavirus in China in February.

Vice-President of the International Air Transport Association, Raphael Kuuchi, says losses in the continent's aviation industry have so far come from suspended and cancelled flights on routes to China.

He said the impact of the virus is bound to get worse for African airlines – which last year posted losses of 100 million dollars.

So far, cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria and Senegal.

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Nigeria has inaugurated a ministerial technical committee on the formulation of a framework for sustainable development and growth of the metals industry.

The federal government says the inauguration of the committee was part of ongoing efforts to diversify the economy from its dependence on oil and gas.

Inaugurating the committee members in Abuja, the Minister of State for Mines and Steel Development, Uchechukwu Ogah, said the committee came at a time government is making efforts to diversify the economy.

The minister said the committee would also have a second look at the draft Nigeria Metallurgical Industry Bill as well as the regulations from the bill.

He urged members of the committee to bring their wealth of experience to rebuild the ailing metals industry and enable the country to utilise locally available raw materials for economic diversification.

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Nigeria says it will keep any agreement it reaches with its neighbours on the reopening of the country’s shut land borders. President Muhammadu Buhari stated this in Abuja when he received the outgoing President of ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development, Bashir Mamman-Ifo, and his successor, Dr. George Donkor.

President Buhari's assurance comes as a tripartite committee comprising Nigeria, Benin and Niger is currently working on how to resolve the issues that led to the partial closure of the borders by Nigeria.

The president said Nigeria, so far, has made gains from the border closure, justifying the decision to take the action.

He commended the ECOWAS Bank’s president for improvements recorded in his eight-year tenure and urged his successor to build on those achievements.

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The Federal Inland Revenue Service says it would rake in four trillion naira as tax revenue from the extractive sector of the Nigerian economy in the 2020 fiscal year.

The Executive Chairman of the Service, Muhammad Nami, disclosed this when a team of the Nigerian office of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development paid him a courtesy visit.

Nami solicited the support of the OECD in stemming the tax evasion scheme of oil majors and multinationals operating in Nigeria through the illegal act of transfer pricing under which these foreign companies dodged tax and transfer their profit offshore.

Nami stated that the use of ICT had made tax collection more complex, especially in trans-border trade and trans-continental commerce.

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Nigeria and Japan have signed an 18.2 million dollar agreement to strengthen network of laboratories of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

The Director of Information at the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, Victoria Agba-Attah, disclosed this in a statement in Abuja.

The Ministry commended Japan for fulfilling the promise made by its Prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to Nigeria at the TICAD 7 Conference, Tokyo, Japan in 2019.

The agreement comes as Nigeria, last weekend, confirmed the emergence of the first case of coronavirus in sub-Saharan Africa.

The ministry said the funds will help complement Nigeria's efforts in the fight against infectious diseases.

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Twitter has told its employees to work from home to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.

In a blog post, the social media giant said it was mandatory for staff in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea to work remotely.

The company also said it was "strongly encouraging" all of its 5,000 employees around the world to not come into work.

The company had already announced that it was pulling out of this month's South by Southwest media conference in Austin, Texas.

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Senegal’s health minister has announced the first case of coronavirus in the country. The case is the second sub-Saharan Africa after one was confirmed in Nigeria last week.

Senegal's Health Minister, Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr, told reporters the patient is a French man who lives in Senegal and came back from a skiing holiday in France on February 26 via Air Senegal.

The minister said the patient passed a temperature check at the capital Dakar’s main airport on his return but developed a fever two days later and went to a private clinic for a check-up. The clinic thereafter alerted authorities who have quarantined him in Dakar’s Fann Hospital.

The rapid spread of the new strain coronavirus called COVID-19 has increased fears of a pandemic, prompting governments to step up control measures and sending global financial markets into a dive.

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Data from Statistics South Africa has shown the country's economy contracted in the fourth quarter of 2019. According to figures released on Tuesday, gross domestic product contracted 1.4% in Q4 2019, following a revised 0.8% contraction in the third quarter.

Economists polled by Reuters had predicted a contraction of 0.1% in quarter-on-quarter and seasonally adjusted terms in the final three months of last year.

The continent's second largest economy shrank 0.5% year-on-year in the fourth quarter after a 0.1% expansion in the previous quarter. The economy expanded 0.2% in the 2019 calendar year compared to 0.8% in 2018.

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