Press cuttings about African leader are thin on the ground (6)
I believe the answer is:
sparse
'thin on the ground' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'press cuttings about african leader' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'about' could be 'a' (abbreviation in Chambers) and 'a' is located in the answer.
an anagram of 'press' is 'sprse' which is located in the remaining letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
'are' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for sparse that I've seen before include "rarely occurring" , "Not much" , "Thinly spread" , "Infrequent" , "Spares, being thin on the ground" .)