Late last year, photographers from around the world were invited to share their photos of people at work on the African continent. Over 18,000 were submitted. Here are the winners and other images.

• 
  1st Prize: Gift of the Ocean, Tanzania by Yann Macherez. First place in the global jury prize went to Cape Town–based freelance photographer Yann Macherez. Macherez decided to spend an afternoon with his camera and some seaweed farmers in Jambiani, a village on the southeast coast of Zanzibar. He wanted to learn about the trade that creates a living for hundreds of the village women, "the way they were farming it, what they did with their crop, and why they called it a 'gift of the ocean'". Before farming seaweed was an option, many women in rural coastal communities were completely dependent on their husbands for their livelihoods. Today, seaweed farming employs 25,000 people, mostly rural women, while upwards of 150,000 people benefit indirectly from the seaweed industry. Women found emancipation and an access to freedom because of this "gift".
• 
  2nd Prize: A man carries a huge hammerhead through the streets of Mogadishu by Marco Gulazzin. A recent escalation of plundering Somali waters by foreign fishing vessels could mean the return of hijackings, locals warn. The country's waters have been exploited by illegal fisheries and the economic infrastructure that once provided jobs has been ravaged. Somalia has been at war for the last 25 years, but 2017 is a turning point. This country in the Horn of Africa is holding its first free elections since 1969; a whole culture is being overturned. Those who created it have shot and killed, but—finally—they are on the losing side. A counter-diaspora is under way, with young and old leaving safe ground to return home. They are building, investing, coming together, and encouraging one another. Beauty parlours and nightclubs are opening up; young folks are timidly starting to play music before live audiences, practise sport in shorts in the stadiums, and make their voices heard in politics. Let this roar of hope drown out the roar of the bombs going off at the checkpoints: the girls of Mogadishu are heading back to the beach in Somaliland.
• 
  3rd Prize: Traditional goat herders in Egypt by Hassanelsayadd

Photo essays

• Women at Work: Zanzibar seaweeds in Tanzania by Rachelclarereed
• Rare or threatened traditional ways of working: The making of thatch in Nigeria by Eric Atie

• Here we have a team of glass blowers creating wine glasses. As it is passed between the various team members, the wine glass becomes apparent.
• Glass blowing a large terrarium
• 
  Great grandmother working on her pineapple farm by Stanley 2321
• 
  Stoneworker in the Central African Republic by Léo Torréton
• 
  صانع احذية (Shoemaker) by Abdulraham Mohammed
  Aam Jamal graduated from the Faculty of Commerce Cairo University and works as a shoemaker in the area of ​​Sayeda Zeinab.
• 
  The Palm oil refiners by Fotokrafting

The 2017 Wiki Loves Africa competition started on 1st October 2017 and closed on 30th November 2017. The original WMF blog post reposted here was edited and expanded to include other images, translations and descriptions not in the original blog post. Barbara Page.