Burkina Faso and Niger have announced they will exchange 18 towns in order to settle a long-running border dispute and end years of litigation.  

Burkina Faso is to gain 14 towns and Niger will receive four between now and the end of 2016 when the drawing of the boundary is complete, Kouara Apiou Kabore, the permanent secretary of the Burkina Faso National Border Commission said this week.     

Togo's presidential election on Saturday saw low turnout, likely boosting President Faure Gnassingbe chances of winning a third term and extending his family's grip on power into a second half-century.

The opposition's prospects of unseating the president were considered poor heading into the vote in the tiny west African nation. 

Burkina Faso authorities investigating the assassination of former president Thomas Sankara during a 1987 coup have sealed his tomb ahead of attempting to identify the remains of the late leader, a lawyer for his family told Agence France Presse on Friday.

A magistrate from a military court ordered "placing seals on 12 tombs" of Sankara and 11 other people, mostly members of the military who died at the same time, the lawyer, Benewende Sankara, said.

The U.S. and French military are assisting in the search for a Romanian mineworker kidnapped in Burkina Faso and believed to have been taken into Mali, Burkina Faso's security minister has said.

Both the France and U.S. have drones based in Niger, which neighbors Burkina Faso, as part of efforts to combat Islamist extremists in the region.

Burkina Faso authorities plan to cross into Mali and Niger to hunt the kidnappers of a Romanian mineworker seized in the far north of the west African nation, a minister said on Sunday.

The security officer was taken on Saturday when five armed men attacked the manganese mine in Tambao, 350 kilometers (220 miles) northeast of the capital, Ouagadougou.

Militants shelled the largest city in restive northern Mali on Sunday, killing a civilian and wounding three relatives as they slept, hospital and security sources told Agene France Presse.

A police official in Gao said the deadly rocket strike hit a household in the north of the city, while two more landed near a clinic in the city centre and in a field to the south.

Burkina Faso's interim leader Michel Kafando has recalled 10 ambassadors who were appointed by his ousted predecessor and were seen as having close ties to the old regime, the transitional authorities said Monday.

The government said some of the recalled diplomats had engaged in "political activism" while others were due to retire or had reached the end of their term abroad, according to a statement sent to Agence France Presse.

Pro-democracy activists from Senegal and Burkina Faso arrested in Democratic Republic of Congo on suspicion of planning to destabilize the country will be expelled and banned from returning, the government announced on Wednesday.

"They will be expelled from the country. They are also being declared persona non grata," DR Congo government spokesman Lambert Mende told AFP. "It's the best solution we could find."

The government of Burkina Faso has ordered former president Thomas Sankara's corpse to be exhumed, potentially rekindling controversy over the 1987 assassination of one of Africa's most idolized leaders.

A government decree issued late Wednesday said the move was aimed at formally identifying the remains of Sankara, slain in a putsch that saw his former friend and protege Blaise Compaore take power.

The Democratic Republic of Congo's lawmakers on Saturday agreed to scrap a contested part of an electoral bill that triggered days of deadly protests over claims it would have enabled President Joseph Kabila to extend his grip on power.

National Assembly speaker Aubin Minaku told Agence France Presse that MPs will withdraw a controversial provision from the planned legislation that required a census to be held before the next election in 2016.