AFCON 2017: Best photos from 22 January

Nigeria take third place in Africa Cup of Nations by beating Tunisia 1 - 0

A large fire burns near an entrance to a besieged Hong Kong campus after protesters threw Molotov cocktails to fend off a police advance on the university, according to AFP reporters at the scene.

Cameroon, which will host the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, says the soccer tournament will move back to its traditional slot of January and February - a move that could anger some European clubs. David Doyle reports.

Leo Ramirez, Hector Retamal and Sebastien Ricci, reporters with Agence France Presse, are among the few journalists who covered the new Coronavirus outbreak from the epicentre of the disease in Wuhan, China, before being repatriated to France and quarantined at the Carry-le-Rouet centre.

Hundreds of mourners attend the funeral of Nabil Hasan al-Quaety, a Yemeni journalist who contributed to AFP, two days after he was killed in the southern city of Aden. Raising his portraits and describing him as a "martyr", angry crowds shouted slogans against groups that are hostile to freedom of expression in Yemen, praising the talents of the young photographer and videojournalist who died aged 34, leaving behind young children and a pregnant widow.

In an exclusive interview with AFP in Rome, Italian Prime minister Giuseppe Conte remembers the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic and addresses the Black Lives Matter movement saying 'internal policies' need to be put in place to stop racism and discrimination from occurring, while also commenting on the M5S fundings allegations and the future of the EU as he sees it. President of the Council since June 2018, at the head of a coalition first with the far-right, and today with the centre-left, Giuseppe Conte, 55, a law professor still unknown two years ago, has emerged stronger from the coronavirus pandemic.

Former Defense Minister Rose Christiane Ossouka Raponda has been promoted to prime minister, making her the first woman to hold the role in Gabon's history.

Since April, Gabon has been under a health state of emergency. The Central African country is facing a major economic hit as a result of Covid-19 lockdown measures and the fall in oil prices. The scars from this unprecedented crisis could remain on Port-Gentil, its oil capital, for a while. Businesses, shops, transport, tourism and other sectors in the country's economic hub are all struggling. Port Gentil has lost millions of euros over the last six months and is relying on public investment to survive. Our team reports.

The mats are falling apart, the safety ropes have snapped and the acrobatic nets are long gone. Gabon's only circus troupe -- and its only circus school -- is facing ruin. Demand for circus shows was dwindling even before the pandemic hit, a disaster that has cemented the troupe's problems.

AFP photographer Saul Loeb captured some of the most iconic photos from inside the US Capitol when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed Congress. In an interview outside Congress the day after, he talks about his eventful day, starting with a security officer telling him how quiet it was in the morning to initially thinking only a dozen protesters made it inside, and finally what happened when "hundreds and hundreds of protesters [were] streaming into the Rotunda from seemingly every direction." Loeb then describes what it was like inside Nancy Pelosi's highly-secure office after it was breached, where he captured a rioter with a foot on a desk and a note left behind that read "We will not back down."

Dozens of children live and work in sweltering heat in the Mindoube landfill in the Gabonese capital Libreville, searching for copper or aluminium items they can then resell. In Gabon, one of Africa's largest oil producers and one of the richest per capita in the region, one-third of the population lived below the poverty line in 2017, says the World Bank. "There are a lot of children here who...spend all their time in the landfill," says an activist.

Cameroon holds the draw for the Africa Cup of Nations on Tuesday. After the coronavirus scuppered the football event last year, the Central African nation is set to host the CAN in January and February last year. As Cameroon battles with the war against Boko Haram, separatist conflict in English-speaking areas and the health crisis, the financial benefits and morale boost offered by the competition can't come soon enough.