Military leaders in Mali and Guinea are under pressure to follow a roadmap for elections after coups in recent years. The sanctions consist of travel bans and asset freezes.

Every morning in the Rwandan capital Kigali, long queues appear outside milk bars, where people come to socialise and unwind over large pints of ikivuguto, a fermented milk mixed with honey. Milk drinking became engrained in the country's culture as the result of a government policy initiated after the 1994 genocide to revive the economy and fight malnutrition. In 2006, the government set up the Girinka programme, in a bid to ensure that even the poorest families were able to afford a cow.

West African bloc ECOWAS said they hoped to have an election plan from Mali by the end of this year, after a meeting with the interim leaders. Mali's authorities had previously said elections could be delayed.

A small-town mayor is set to take on Prime Minister Viktor Orban in 2022 parliamentary elections, after winning an opposition primary. Peter Marki-Zay will represent a broad spectrum of parties who have joined forces to oust Orban and his ruling Fidesz party.

Police in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, say dozens of protesters have been killed in attempts to storm public buildings. After a request for help from Kazakhstan's president, Russia is leading an alliance of ex-Soviet states in sending what they call peacekeeping forces.

Why are Mali's neighbours coming down hard? A harsh embargo has been decided after coup leaders in that landlocked West African state reneged on their promise of a quick return to civilian rule. How harsh? We talk border closures and trade embargoes. It's not as if the region has never seen a putsch before: look no further than neighbouring Guinea.

Leaders from the Southern African Development Community said on Wednesday they were extending a troop deployment in Mozambique to help the government fight an Islamic State-linked insurgency.

The ECOWAS bloc has suspended Burkina Faso after the army overthrew the president. Burkina Faso is the third member to face punishments from the bloc as a result of a military takeover in roughly 18 months.

In an interview with FRANCE 24, the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the bloc "will continue" providing military support to Ukraine, while taking care not to become a "belligerent" in the conflict. Speaking to Europe Editor Catherine Nicholson, Borrell added that he expects the EU to eventually impose a total ban on imports of Russian oil in a bid to reduce the Kremlin's ability to finance its war in Ukraine.

This week, Iraq was plunged into more political uncertainty. Lawmakers from the parliamentary bloc of powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr resigned en masse at their leader's request. The Sadrist bloc is the largest in parliament and since an election last October, parties have been unable to form a government. The move aims to up pressure in a bid to end the country's political paralysis. We take a closer look.

Although EU candidacy for Ukraine and Moldova has been hailed as historic, frustrations among other candidates years into their own membership bids should serve as a reminder that the path ahead won't be easy.

The sanctions have badly hit Mali, with its economy already under severe strain from military coups and a decade-long jihadist insurgency.