Africa's week in pictures: 14 - 20 July 2017

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A selection of the best photos from across Africa and of Africans elsewhere in the world this week.

A child plays with a skipping rope in South Africa's Cape Town on Tuesday as a crowd gathers to mark what would have been anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela's 99th birthday.

Meanwhile this child sends out a political message, urging people to follow in the footsteps of Mr Mandela who dedicated most of his life to opposing racial discrimination and promoting unity.

On the same day, these girls in traditional dress take part in a ceremony at the international airport in Ivory Coast's main city, Abidjan, to celebrate the national carrier's acquisition of an Airbus A320 to bolster its fleet to 10.

On Sunday, Benin's Angelique Kidjo, the three-time Grammy award winner known as "Africa's Premier Diva", performs at the Middle East's oldest arts festival, held annually in Baalbeck, Lebanon.

Ethiopian-American Kelela Mizanekristos, a relative newcomer to the international stage, performs at Canada's Quebec City Summer Festival on Saturday.

In Kenya on the same day, women from the Maasai ethnic group mourn attend the funeral of Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery. A Maasai, he was buried at his village in Kenya's Rift Valley after he died of a heart attack aged 67.

In the southern African kingdom of Lesotho on Saturday, men wear their traditional blankets to stay warm in the bitterly cold mountain air in Semonkong, a tiny town which was established as a refuge for Basotho people displaced by conflict with colonial forces in the 1880s.

In Cairo on Sunday, an Egyptian woman looks from the window while her daughter takes pictures of the funeral procession of Syed Tafshan, who died following clashes with the security forces over the demolition of illegal buildings.

Also on Sunday, these women represented Egypt in synchronised swimming at the World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Hungary.

These Nigerian women cook in the kitchen at a girls' school in north-eastern Maiduguri city, where an insurgency by militant Islamists has forced many people to flee their homes and take refuge in camps.

In this photo released on Thursday, an image of former Soviet leader Josef Stalin adorns the wall of a restaurant named "The Dictator" in an upmarket suburb of Tunisia's capital, Tunis. A steak named "Grilled Freedom" is just one of many dishes that stand out on the menu.

In this handout photo released on Friday, a leopard cub is seen suckling on a lioness in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a World Heritage Site in Tanzania. Conservationists say the photograph is the first evidence of inter-species bonding between predators that are normally mortal enemies.

Images courtesy of AFP, EPA, Getty Images and Reuters