The year in photos
As chosen by Paul Botes, The Continent’s photo editor.
The African continent has again barely featured in the global selections of the best or most impactful photography from 2025. Photography of Africa accounted for less than 5% of the work chosen and those photographs tended to display conflict, displacement, minerals, and, of course, wildlife.
In reality, there were hundreds of other photographs to pick from.
I let my bosses know that whittling down the hundreds to a measly five is super difficult. I argued for at least 10. But they remained disagreeable. This selection, therefore, represents a tiny fraction of the African photography that resonated with me this year.
As photo editor of The Continent, I was fortunate enough to commission a lot of original photography this year. My favourite story to work on was the Lagos Studio Archive, featuring photographs from Abi Morocco Photos. That stuff still makes me smile – unfortunately, it can’t be considered for this list. Fethi Sahraoui’s intimate look at Algiers was a standout too. This work, commissioned as part of our We Built This City series, explored the photographer’s complex relationship with his adoptive city through beautiful, dreamlike photographs. We commissioned Moses Sawasawa to photograph the deteriorating situation in Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), after the March 23 Movement rebels had seized control of the city. One of the photographs in particular stood out for me, as it filled me with the urgency I was reading about.
Photography of Africa accounted for less than 5% of the work chosen and those photographs tended to display conflict, displacement, minerals, and, of course, wildlife.
We also published plenty of photography commissioned by other editors. Luis Tato’s portrait of a young woman in the rain, displaced in the DRC conflict, is a remarkable photograph that exudes joy in a challenging situation. Marco Longari’s portrait of a Comoran couple’s “Grand Marriage” is gentle, with the colourful, textured view from inside a home, imbuing the occasion with even more meaning. Tato’s striking photograph of a woman leaping away from the police’s attention in Kenya is arresting and stands out among the thousands of images transmitted during the protests.
