A selection of the week’s best photos from across the African continent:

On Saturday, this young man jumps into the Nile River to escape the sweltering heatwave sweeping across Egypt.

Members of the Dance Centre Kenya (DCK) rehearse on the stage before the opening night of the musical “Cats” in Nairobi on Friday.

It’s a battle of brawn as two men wrestle in the Senegalese cultural spectacle known as “laamb” in the Wolof language in Dakar on Sunday.

In Kenya, swords not fists are used as members of the Tsavora Fencing Mtaani Club fence in the streets of Mathare, an informal settlement of Nairobi, as part of an initiative to offer hope in a place riddled with crime and lack of opportunity.

A misty Wednesday sees fisherman haul in sardines caught in the coastal resort town Scottburgh in South Africa…

And the haul is bountiful.

Excitement sweeps through Langata Women Maximum Security Prison in Nairobi, as the inmates doll up to vie for the crown in the annual Miss Langata Prison beauty show on Friday.

On the same day, at the Kolfe Police Training Camp on the outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, illegal guns recovered during various security operations are doused in fuel and burnt.

An animal due to be sold and slaughtered looks out from its cage in a bustling market in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on Wednesday ahead of the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha.

A Somali man jumps into the Indian Ocean at a beach in the capital, Mogadishu, to join a group of revellers on Friday.

Winter has arrived in the Southern Hemisphere, and two men brave a frosty Wednesday morning to go on a walk, as temperatures drop in the South African city of Johannesburg.