{"podcast":{"title":"Focus on Africa","slug":"focus-on-africa-160336","podcast_index_feed_id":160336,"rss_url":"https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p00gbjvb.rss","website_url":"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gbjvb","image_url":"http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/3000x3000/p0fsb9dq.jpg","author":"BBC","episode_count":996,"summary":"Two essential stories to round off your working day. Explaining the news from Africa. Hosted by Nkechi Ogbonna.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-24T04:18:30.182171+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/focus-on-africa-160336"},"episode":{"title":"Sierra Leone drops treason charge against ex-president","slug":"sierra-leone-drops-treason-charge-against-ex-president","published_at":"2026-07-16T15:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/focus-on-africa-160336/sierra-leone-drops-treason-charge-against-ex-president","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/focus-on-africa-160336","url":"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct8n53","audio_url":"http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download-rss/proto/http/vpid/p0nz61sh.mp3","summary":"Sierra Leone's government has dropped its charges, including treason, against ex-President Ernest Bai Koroma, who was arrested in connection with an attempted coup nearly three years ago. The charges had been dropped on health grounds, Information Minister Chernor Bah told the BBC. The 72-year-old former president has always denied involvement in the November 2023 attempted coup when gunmen broke into a military armoury and several prisons, freeing almost 2,000 inmates. We hear what this move means for the country's politics. And how female sports commentators are excelling in a male dominated field while using local languages to bring the World Cup closer to African audiences. Presenter: Nkechi Ogbonna Producers: Keikantse Shumba and Blessing Aderogba Senior Producer: Charles Gitonga Technical Producer: David Nzau Editors: Rhoda Odhiambo and Maryam Abdalla","meta_description":"Sierra Leone's government has dropped its charges, including treason, against ex-President Ernest Bai Koroma, who was arrested in connection with an attem…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1379,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/focus-on-africa-160336/episodes/sierra-leone-drops-treason-charge-against-ex-president/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/focus-on-africa-160336/sierra-leone-drops-treason-charge-against-ex-president.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}