French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday promised to help raise more than $1 billion in new funding for education in the developing world, calling schools vital in countering extremism. [...] Macron said he was working with Senegal to boost the Global Partnership for Education which brings together donors, international organizations and the private sector to expand and improve schooling around the world.

Nearly a decade later, the 24-year-old is bringing her idea to life through a program in Senegal that encourages young women in coding and technology. She is developing a mobile phone application that will allow teachers, parents and students to swap books and supplies. It's called WECCIO, or "exchange" in the local Wolof language.

Maylis and her three friends are ambitious young computer programmers who study together in the northern city of Saint-Louis, and are part of a growing push to get girls coding in Senegal and several other African countries. Coding clubs have been set up for girls between the age of five and 24 as part of a #RewritingTheCode campaign started by the charity Theirworld.

Ibrahima Syla arrives early to open the doors of the Fama Boutique, his shop at the Soumbédioune Craft Village in Dakar's Medina neighborhood. […] He has noticed a rise in Chinese vendors selling imitation products in markets across the city over the past two decades. "I feel concerned about it [affecting my business]," he says. "An original product is something like a dream and you don't want someone to take it."

In April 1966, legendary jazz musician Duke Ellington travelled to Dakar, Senegal, with his orchestra to play at the first World Festival of Negro Arts. Organised against the backdrop of African decolonisation and the push for civil rights in the US, the festival was hailed as the inaugural cultural gathering of the black world.

President Paul Kagame has called on African nations to scale up investments in research to increase impact of science in development.The president was speaking at the opening session of the Next Einstein Forum (NEF) currently underway in Dakar, Senegal.