When one of South Africa’s biggest newspaper chains was sold last month, an odd name was buried in the list of new owners: China International Television Corp. A major stake in a South African newspaper group might seem an unusual acquisition for Chinese state television, but it was no mystery to anyone who has watched the rapid expansion of China’s media empire across Africa.

It's a June night in Kinshasa, and rapper JB Mpiana's weekly VIP bash is just starting to heat up. Toned groupies splash like mermaids in a sunken pool. Middle-aged businessmen perch on the ledge above to watch. A minute before midnight, JB runs onstage among a huge posse of gyrating dancers in sunglasses. He rips into some of his biggest hits; a bombastic performer, he glides across the stage with a beefy grace, dressed in a hunter-orange jumpsuit and matching cap.

They're involved in Algeria and Angola, Benin and Botswana, Burkina Faso and Burundi, Cameroon and the Cape Verde Islands. And that's just the ABCs of the situation. Skip to the end of the alphabet and the story remains the same: Senegal and the Seychelles, Togo and Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia. From north to south, east to west, the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, the heart of the continent to the islands off its coasts, the US military is at work.

The formula has worked in California, Florida and Paris. Now officials in Zimbabwe, eager to rebrand a country notorious for economic collapse and political violence, want to build a "Disneyland in Africa". Walter Mzembi, the tourism and hospitality minister, told New Ziana, the official news agency, that the government was planning a $300m (£193m) theme park near Victoria Falls, the country's top tourist attraction.

Nelson Mandela is officially "improving," though still in critical condition at a South African hospital. His long battle with a lung infection has South Africans anxiously contemplating their "post-Mandela" future in a still racially divided country. In a unique strategy, one man is hoping to help heal those divisions with a pair of barbecue tongs. Jan Scannell is a 32-year-old former accountant with a dream: To establish a national holiday in South Africa like July 4 called Braai Day.

Adeso is a humanitarian and development organization that has emerged to change the way people think about and deliver aid in Africa—that is, from within. Formerly known as Horn Relief, Adeso has expanded from one community to other parts of Somalia, South Sudan and Kenya. As a current implementing partner of US foreign aid in the Horn of Africa, Ali agreed to sit down with me to take a look at foreignassistance.gov, where USAID, MCC, and the Treasury Department released new data last month. What would she be able to find out about her own organization’s programming there?

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has threatened to retaliate against companies from Britain and the United States if the two Western powers persist with sanctions that he described as "harassment." Mugabe's comments on Sunday follow scrutiny from outside observers of his re-election in a July vote that rival Morgan Tsvangirai denounced as a "coup by ballot" which involved alleged widespread vote-rigging.

The United States fear that the potential European trade deals with Sub-Saharan African nations (the Economic Partnership Agreements or EPAs currently under negotiations) might affect the benefits to its own companies, as reviews its own preferential trade initiative with the continent, Voice of America informs.