The minister told the BBC's Focus on Africa radio programme that people were returning home - but help was desperately needed to help them:
Bye-bye to Mercedes for Mozambican officials
BBC Africa, Maputo
Mozambique’s government is cutting down on the perks of office – so driving a Mercedes-Benz and getting free housing will be things of the past for high-ranking officials.
Finance Minister Adriano Malaeiane said the aim was to save $120m (£90m) next year.
His announcement comes a month after the government came under fire for buying 45 cars at an estimate cost of $2m (£1.5m) at a time of austerity.
After a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Mr Maleiane said:
Due to the difficulties the state is facing to make housing available for high ranking governmental officials, it had resorted to renting. This has brought about enormous costs to the state. So, the measure now is to set an average ceiling, first to enforce discipline and secondly to save."
For cars, only vehicles with between 1,300cc and 1,500cc engines would be allowed – this is much smaller than the Mercedes S500’s estimated 2,999cc engine, which was reportedly among those bought last month.
The minister added:
We are also going to put an end to the long-standing scandal of buying cars with the sole purpose of selling them at a discount to officials for their personal use.
Instead when an official takes office he will be granted an allowance to spend on whatever he likes, provided that it is acceptable to the society.
The fuel and communications costs have also been a heavy burden to the state. Therefore, we have now decided on maximum expenditure limits."
Condom dress creates a stir in DR Congo
BBC Africa, Kinshasa
Here in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, there's a lot of talk around a dress.
a distance, it looks ordinary. But when you get close, you see that it is made of condoms stuck one on top of the other. Some are open, others are in
But the creations aren't for sale.
Designer Felicite Luwungu says she just wanted to get people talking.
She told the BBC:
I lost a few members of my family to HIV. I also wanted to do my bit to highlight the need to protect ourselves from sexually transmitted diseases and HIV."
DR Congo is conservative and anything linked to sex is considered taboo.
The designer insists that as long as it remains so it will be hard to explain to people about the importance of safe sex.
But Freddy, a student in the capital, Kinshasa, thinks she may have gone too far.
If someone wears something like this in public or in places where there are children... people will be really shocked. It would be better to find another way to inform people."
Ms Luwungu does not need to worry about her critics though.
If she needs to get some support, she need look no further than friends and family.
Her sister Benie told the BBC:
My first reaction was 'I want to see this'. Because it's original. She came up with the idea herself. I really like what she's done by mixing all these condoms like she has done. It is magnificent."
2017's 'most influential Africans' revealed
The New African Magazine has unveiled its list of this year's most influential people - including a deaf-blind activist, the editor of the world's most famous fashion bible and an Academy Award-nominated actress.
Haben Girma, a US citizen with an Eritrean mother and Ethiopian father who was Harvard's first deaf-blind graduate, Ghanaian-born Edward Enninful, the new editor of British Vogue, and Irish-Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga are joined by 97 others excelling in eight different categories.
Nigerians dominate the list, with 21 entries - although President Muhammadu Buhari fails to make the grade, passed over in favour of his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo.
In fact, only three elected African leaders are on this year's list: Guinea's Alpha Conde, Ghana's Nana Akufo-Addo and Rwanda's Paul Kagame.
The New African Magazine editor Anver Versi said:
Our criteria for 'influential' this year was a fairly simple one – it is applied to people whose work or activity has had some sort of transformative effect outside their main calling. This effect results in a change of perception or provides inspiration to others.
Many in our selection have shattered the proverbial glass-ceilings or disability stigma and do so with great bravery, determination and personal sacrifice. Others yield economic power that impacts world markets."
The eyes of the world have all turned to look at one woman today.
And no, it is not a celebrity engaged in a social media spat, or an actress marrying a prince.
The woman everyone is looking at is slightly older than them all - by a good few million years.
Little Foot is a skeleton found in Sterkfontein, north-west of Johannesburg, South Africa, in the 1990s.
Scientists finally unveiled her today - but what do we know about South Africa's oldest resident? Here are five things.
She was about 30 when she died - which seems like a good age for someone born more than three million years ago
But it doesn't seem like she died of natural causes. According to the Professor Ron Clarke, who found her, she might have fallen down a 10m (33 ft) hole
Her name is not a reference to the beloved children's film, The Land Before Time, whose hero is called Littlefoot, but a joke linked to another well-known "Foot", Big Foot, the Mail&Guardian reports
South African scientists believe the remains are 3.67 million years old, meaning Little Foot was alive around 500,000 years before Lucy, the famous skeleton of an ancient human relative found in Ethiopia
Little Foot and Lucy belong to the same genus - Australopithecus - but they are different species.
In many parts of the world, there are concerns that the move - promised by Mr Trump during his presidential campaign - will make it difficult for the US to be seen as a neutral mediator.
Ahead of Mr Trump's speech, the ANC’s sub-committee on international relations told a media
briefing that it continues to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
However, the ANC is concerned about the possible fall-out from such a decision.
Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba, who spoke on behalf of committee, said:
“Well it’s a difficult one because... it’s their own decision and we continue monitoring the impact thereof... Obviously we are concerned to say what are the ulterior motives? We are really watching that space and we are worried.”
The ANC also reiterated its “support for the people of Palestine in their struggle for self-determination”.
Nigerians are planning to take to the streets to ensure the police special anti-robbery squad (Sars) is disbanded after an outcry over alleged police brutality.
This is despite the Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris's promised reform of Sars.
Deji Adeyanju, of Concerned Nigerians organisation, explained to the BBC:
This is not the first time the inspector general would give an order which they refuse to carry out. At the inception of this government, the IG ordered that all police road blocks be removed from our roads, but the road blocks remained, so we don’t trust the police to keep their words."
The group is calling for a complete overhaul of the police force, to be replaced by a more civil elite force which citizens can trust.
The legendary French singer Johnny Hallyday, who has died of lung cancer at the age of 74, was famously beloved in his home country, but almost unknown anywhere else.
But that may not be entirely true: People across French-speaking Africa have been sharing their memory of the man known as France's Elvis.
Ivorian television host Didier Bleou writes on his Facebook page that Hallyday was ‘’a hero, a performer who set alight the stage’’, while bestselling author Isaie Biton Koulibaly remembers meeting Hallyday in Ivory Coast and calls him ‘’the only real and true French star ever’’.
Koulibaly writes that the French singer had a huge influence on a whole generation of African performers, such as Ivorian reggae singer Alpha Blondy.
Hallyday’s songs – mainly rock’n roll hits translated into French – marked their first exposure to the pop sounds of the 1960s and 1970s.
"That part of our teens, when we were hungry for Western influence, has gone,’’ says Koulibaly.
who sold more than 100 million records worldwide, was a lover of the fast life.
In 2002 he took part in the Paris-Dakar car rally. He also performed many times
on the continent, including on a major tour in May 1968 which took him to
Kinshasa, Dakar, Abidjan, Niamey, Ouagadougou, Yaounde and Fort-Lamy (now the
Chadian capital N'Djamena).
However, his visit to Cameroon was cut short by a diplomatic incident
which led to him being expelled and cancelling his concert.
According to a
French diplomatic cable at the time, the star arrived drunk at the Hotel
Independance in Yaounde and punched the Central African Republic’s visiting minister for public administration.
Later, Hallyday told the French news
agency, AFP: ‘’That guy said terrible things about us, including that we had
long hair. I protested. He grabbed my polo shirt and ripped it.’’
Harare's King George VI Barracks will change to Josiah Tongogara, the guerrilla commander who led forces during the liberation struggle and died in a car crash just before independence in 1980.
The army was instrumental in the momentous events last month that led Robert Mugabe, who had ruled the country since 1980, to resign as president.
Uganda begins Somalia troop withdrawal
BBC Africa, Kampala
Uganda’s military says it has begun
the withdrawal of 281 troops serving in the African Union
peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
This is part of a UN plan that
will see African Union (AU) soldiers’ numbers reduced by 1,000 by the end of this
At the moment there are more than 20,000
soldiers serving in the AU mission (Amisom).
Uganda, which first sent troops to the country in 2007, is the biggest contributor with more than 6,000 soldiers in the force.
Kenya, Burundi, Djibouti and
Ethiopia are also expected to reduce their numbers by 31 December.
Pulling out 1,000 soldiers will
not be immediately significant but it shows the international backers of Amisom
want to see a handover of security to Somali soldiers and police.
African countries have been praised for bringing increased stability to Somalia but there is
frustration about corruption among their forces and the failure to secure an
Efforts to develop Somalia’s
national army are gaining ground.
The US has already increased its troop
numbers in the country to more than 500 and stepped up airstrikes – boosting
its co-operation with the Somali military.
But defeating the militant Islamist al-Shabab
group will not be easy.
A massive bomb attack blamed on
militants killed more than 500 people in the capital, Mogadishu, two months ago
- the deadliest in its campaign against various UN-backed governments.
Fed up of Lagos traffic? Take a boat
Everyone knows traffic in Nigeria's main city of Lagos is terrible, so what do you do about it?
Well, if you're smart, you get out the car and into a boat, say these (very happy looking) Lagos residents.
Indeed, Idris Anjorin believes the decision to get off the road and on to the water was a major milestone in his life after years of being late for work.
He told news agency AFP:
I wasn't happy I came late again. A co-worker who noticed my mood advised me to try a boat ride. The next day, I arrived at Bayeku jetty at 06:00 and within an hour I had made it to the office. That was a turning point in my life."
Now Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode is hoping to change more lives by getting two million people on to the water every day.
However, first he needs to improve safety, reduce boat running costs and improve the infrastructure.
Until he has done that, we leave you with the happy face of one commuter who has already made the switch:
Residents in an upmarket suburb of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, are
unhappy about a noisy neighbour - with a helicopter, according to NTV Kenya.
They accuse well-known businessman and politician Steve Mbogo of
frequently using his helicopter at unsocial hours - early in the morning
and very late at night – which they say wakes them up.
An association of Karen suburb residents has written to the
National Environment Management Authority (Nema) about the “disruptions and
disturbance” – a copy of the letter has been tweeted by a blogger:
Parents have reportedly stormed the gates of a college in central Ghana after the mysterious deaths of four students.
Another 18 students at the Kumasi Academy, in Ashanti region, are receiving treatment - with the local health authority appealing to the World Health Organization (WHO) for help containing the outbreak.
The BBC's Muhammad Fahd Adam in the capital, Accra, says it was chaos at the gates on Tuesday as parents desperately tried to remove their children from the school.
However, the school is due to remain open until Friday, Dr Emmanuel, the Kumasi regional health director, said.
This is so the students and teachers can be screened before being sent home.
The reason why we don’t want to close the school now is that, we don’t want a situation whereby if the disease is infectious and some students have already got the infection, they are going to infect their whole family with it. That will be a serious risk."
There are fears the number could remain high as the youth population grows - especially as four in five children infected with HIV in the region are still not receiving the life-saving treatment they need.
West and Central Africa is home to 25% of children living with HIV worldwide, but has limited capacity to diagnose the virus - meaning parents are not seeking the treatment their child needs.
Marie-Pierre Poirier, the region's Unicef director, has called for improved early diagnosis as as well as access to treatment.
It is tragic that so many children and adolescents today are not receiving the treatment they need just because they have not been tested.”
Little Foot's skeleton to be unveiled
BBC News, Johannesburg
One of the world’s
oldest and most complete skeletons of our ancient ancestors is being unveiled
in Johannesburg today.
scientists, who have spent 20 years excavating and preparing Little Foot, say
the fossilised remains are more than three million years old.
She is small, ape-like,
and almost completely intact.
Scientists have been carefully extracting her from a block of
ancient rock over the course of two decades.
Now Little Foot is
unbound, reassembled and anxious to shake up our understanding of our own human
Her exact age has been
hotly disputed, but her handlers insist she’s 3.67 million years old.
That means she was
alive at roughly the same time as Lucy – a different, less complete, but more
famous skeleton of an ancient human relative found in East Africa.
It now looks like our
family tree may be even more complicated than we thought, and spread across a
much bigger chunk of this continent.
Little Foot was found
in a network of caves north-west of Johannesburg – a site that has become
something of a treasure trove for scientists more used to drawing big
conclusions from far smaller fragments of ancient bone.
In this video, Prof Ron Clarke, from University of the Witwatersrand, explains his painstaking work to uncover the world's most complete skeleton of an Australopithecus: