sabrina mahtani is human rights lawyer who researches prisons rights issues across africa. here's her reaction on the situation. the situation on the continent is really dire in terms of patent rights. ——of prison rights. i think this is an issue that is routinely left to the bottom of government agendas and sadly, it's only when a very tragic incident like what has happened in burundi happens that it gets to have some attention. we know that the majority of prisons on the continent are vastly overcrowded and many of them, actually, are holding prisoners who are not even sentenced. so i think about half of the african countries more than 40% of the prison population are in pretrial detention. and i think particularly with the covid—19 pandemic, we need to ask ourselves, do we need to have this number of people in prisons? the african commission, the un, the who have called on countries to make sure that prison populations are reduced in order to spread