The BBC reports that news of pop star Michael Jackson’s death has been greeted with a mixture of disbelief and sadness across Africa.

In Nigeria, a presenter on Radio Continental broke down live on air and could not continue her programme.

A woman in Ghana burst into tears in the capital, Accra, when told by a BBC reporter about the musician’s death.

In 1999, he was presented with a lifetime achievement award by South African icon Nelson Mandela at the Kora All Africa Music Awards.

Michael Jackson first visited the continent at the age of 14 as the lead singer of the Jackson Five.

Emerging from the plane in Senegal, he responded to a welcome of drummers and dancers by screaming: ”This is where I come from.”

‘Spectacular disappointment’

He returned for an African tour 19 years later, when the king of pop was crowned chief of several African villages.

But the trip quickly turned into a public relations nightmare amid allegations that police had beaten the crowds who went to see him and complaints in the local media that the pop star had been seen holding his nose, as if to keep out a bad smell.

Ghanaian journalist Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, who says she was a huge Jackson Five fan as a girl, covered the visit.

She said he spent most of his time locked away in his plush hotel or hidden in his limousine when out.

When his car window wound down for a brief minute for him to greet fans, she asked him about his trip to Africa, and he replied limply: “Beautiful, I love it.”

It was “a spectacular disappointment in many ways”, Ms Quist-Arcton told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

But the crowds who lined Abidjan’s streets during his visit were testament to his huge popularity across the continent where fans have been expressing their shock at his death.

The BBC’s Tom Oladipo in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos said the Radio Continental presenter broke down sobbing live on air after hearing the news and her co-presenter had to take over.

One of Michael Jackson’s brothers, Marlon, is planning to develop a controversial luxury resort, a mixture of a slave history theme park and a museum dedicated to the Jackson Five in Nigeria.

He also had passionate fans in Ghana.

“It’s not true, no it’s not true,” a woman in Accra wailed as her companion accused our correspondent of lying about the news of Jackson’s death.

“He’s a legend, he’s not supposed to die,” a woman in the Kenyan capital told the BBC.

But others expressed concern about his obsession with his appearance.

“He was not proud to a black American, he wasn’t, he wanted very much to be white,” a man in Nairobi said.

The BBC’s Jonah Fisher in Johannesburg says Michael Jackson’s most tangible contribution to Africa came at the peak of his career in the mid-1980s, when he co-wrote the charity song We are the World with Lionel Ritchie.

Sung by a group of leading artists, the single topped charts around the world raising awareness and more than $50m for famine relief in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

Cairo, - The Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit on Thursday met in Cairo with the Eritrean Foreign Minister, Osman Saleh, who is currently on a visit to Egypt.

The Assistant Foreign Minister for African Affairs Mona Omar told reporters in Cairo that the talks were friendly and she explained that it focused mainly on the situation in the Horn of Africa especially the Somali situation.

She added that the situation in Somalia was worrisome to all regional countries, noting that there should be collective efforts to resolve the crisis

(IRIN) - Locust swarms have migrated from northwestern Somalia and spread to seven regions of Ethiopia, but have so far caused minimal damage to crops, an official has said.

“About a dozen swarms have entered the country,” Kassahun Yitaferu, an entomologist at the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said. “These swarms can cover a small plot of 50 hectares to large areas of 26 square kilometers.”

Six regions - Somali, Afar, Harari, Oromia, Amhara, Tigray - and the Dire Dawa administrative council area are affected.

“The swarms are not breeding in Ethiopia,” Kassahun said. Instead, they matured in northern Somaliland before moving into Ethiopia, where they were first reported in the Somali Region, eastern Ethiopia, in April.

Since 10 June, no new swarms have been reported entering Ethiopia, and those in the country have broken up into smaller groups and spread to a number of areas.

“There is no strong locust survey and control operation in Somalia,” Kassahun added. “Those locusts which exist in solitary form in that part of the Horn of Africa breed without restraint when environmental conditions become favorable.”

Abdurahaman Abdullahi, senior research officer at the regional Desert Locust Control Organization for Eastern Africa (DLCO), said lack of systems in northwestern Somalia had allowed the locust infestation to spread undetected.

DLCO dispatches help

DLCO, he said, had dispatched experts and chemicals to the affected areas, together with a cropduster (from Nairobi) on 12 April. Since detecting the swarms in Ethiopia, it had deployed an aircraft in Dire Dawa to spray the affected areas.

“Right now the swarms moving to eastern Ethiopia are fully controlled,” Kassahun said. “But those which escaped into the South Gonder area and a few in the North Shewa area are not yet fully controlled.”

Locusts have three breeding seasons: spring, summer and winter. North Gonder and Western Tigray are areas that receive summer rains from July to September. It is feared that a locust spread in these areas during the summer season, could affect crop production.

“If the locusts breed in the summer, most of the crops, including sesame, will be attacked,” Kassahun said. “We are afraid a few groups may possibly go to summer breeding areas in northwestern Ethiopia, North Gonder and Western Tigray.”