Frank Butler

Dr Dan and Dr Betty Gikonyo built and run the Karen Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.

A Sierra Leone village of nearly 1,000 people is put under quarantine after a dead woman's body tested positive for Ebola.

Car hire app Uber has been the target of protests and legal action by taxi drivers around the world, but is now making inroads into Africa.

A Zimbabwean minister faces corruption charges over allegations he extorted a white farmer in order to protect him from eviction.

French prosecutors say "with certainty" that a wing part found on Reunion Island in July came from missing flight MH370.

At least 19 people are killed in two bomb attacks in the far north of Cameroon, where Nigeria's Boko Haram militants are active, officials say.

A court in Egypt sentences two belly dancers to six months each in jail for inciting debauchery over their scantily-clad performances in videos.

Former Congolese rebel leader Bosco Ntaganda tells the International Criminal Court he is a soldier, not an "infamous killer".

by Megan McCloskey

The beat goes on. For the third time in four months, the watchdog for spending on the war in Afghanistan has released a report that shows the U.S. military commissioned a multimillion-dollar building in Afghanistan it didn’t need.

This time around, it’s a headquarters for a Special Forces base in Kandahar that was canceled halfway through at a cost of $2.2 million.

The latest disclosure raises the total for surplus buildings uncovered by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction to nearly $42 million. There was the $25 million headquarters in Helmand that three generals said was not needed but was built anyway and never used. Then there was a warehouse in Kandahar for $14.7 million that was also never used, because the unit for which it was intended ended its mission in Afghanistan before the building was completed.

Money as a Weapons System

How U.S. Commanders Spent $2 Billion of Petty Cash in Afghanistan Read more.

Boondoggle HQ

The $25 Million Building in Afghanistan Nobody Needed Read more.

In the latest report released Tuesday, SIGAR detailed how the military decided in July 2012 that it wanted a new, single headquarters on Camp Brown in Kandahar. The camp was home to troops with the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force. (SIGAR also sent the Pentagon a more detailed, classified letter about its findings on the building.)

The military hired an Afghan company to build a $5 million, two-story building with administrative space and a secure communications room for logistics, maintenance, personnel and operations management, according to the report. The building was scheduled to be completed in July 2013 – just as the United States greatly reduced its military presence in the country and only 18 months before the combat mission was scheduled to end.

The contractor, Road and Roof Construction Company, fell almost a year behind schedule, and in October 2013, the commanders whose troops had been assigned to occupy the building decided it was no longer needed, SIGAR said.

Six months later, the military canceled the project.

By this time, $2.2 million had already been spent. The building remains half constructed, with no stairs to the second floor, electrical wiring or plumbing, SIGAR said. It has never been used.

Military officials told SIGAR that they halted construction because the operations planned for the region had changed, making Camp Brown’s existing facilities sufficient. The inspectors said this decision was reasonable, but suggested that the military should consider completing the building for the Afghan government’s use.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which was responsible for the contract, told SIGAR that it was still negotiating a final settlement with the contractor. Because negligence was not involved in the cancellation, it’s possible that the company could demand the rest of the contract be paid, the report said.

South Africa is named as the country with the highest number of dollar millionaires in Africa, with Johannesburg at the top.