Concluding an 11-day, four-nation African trip in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, last month, the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV spoke of the need to promote the dignity of prisoners and not to use the justice system to punish but to help rebuild lives and communities. His immediate audience may have comprised inmates at the infamous Bata prison, but the message his words carried resonates across Africa.

In fact, his real audience might as well have been Africa’s ruling elites because, across the continent, many prisons are no longer institutions of justice but instruments of power.

Let’s start with Eritrea, the Horn of Africa nation that seceded from Ethiopia in 1993 and has been under the iron-fisted rule of Isaias Afwerki ever since. Often described as the world’s most repressive State, it holds more than 10 000 political prisoners, many of whom have never been brought before a judge, let alone charged, according to rights watchdog Amnesty International.

The US State Department reports that hundreds of the inmates are prisoners of conscience and include journalists and others jailed for their beliefs.

In an interview with the UK’s The Guardian newspaper last year, an escaped former prisoner spoke of being held in underground cells so cramped that there was no room to lie down and of being made to break stones and harvest crops. Then there were the torture chambers.

His crime in the eyes of Eritrea’s authorities was twofold: preaching in a country where religious freedom is restricted and holding clandestine prayer sessions with congregants, as well as resisting a compulsory military call-up.

Zooming out from Eritrea, a broader pattern becomes evident. In many countries, governments are increasingly using what Amnesty International calls the “weaponisation of legal systems” – the repurposing of laws and courts to target opponents instead of upholding justice. This includes arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detentions, enforced disappearances and trials riddled with irregularities.

In Cameroon, the US State Department and other credible bodies highlight arbitrary detentions and military trials of civilians, particularly linked to political unrest.

In Zimbabwe, the pattern is cyclical: arrest, bail denial, prolonged detention. Opposition politicians and activists are all too frequently held for weeks or months on what rights groups describe as “baseless charges”, often with allegations of assault in custody.

This is not law enforcement but law as intimidation.

The problem is no longer confined to the usual authoritarian suspects – the Zimbabwes and Cameroons of this world. In Tunisia, once hailed as a democratic success, Human Rights Watch reports that arbitrary detention has become a “cornerstone of repression”, targeting opposition politicians, journalists and lawyers.

In February, the country’s appeal court upheld and increased lengthy prison sentences against high-profile politicians, including opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi and former security officials, as part of a crackdown on dissent.

Ghannouchi, 84, veteran head of the Islamist-leaning Ennahda party, was handed an increased 20-year prison sentence, up from the previous 14-year term. He has been in prison since 2023. With the new sentence, the total sentences against him on several charges rise to 50 years.

The message is clear: ballots may exist, but the cell remains the final arbiter of power.

Africa’s real prison crisis is not about overcrowding or poor sanitation – although both are real and severe. It is about control. Continent-wide, the same architecture is in place, comprising vague laws aimed at criminalising dissent, law-enforcement agencies empowered to detain at will, judiciaries that are weakened or captured, and prisons that are used to break political opponents physically and psychologically.

What may vary is not the method but the degree of visibility.

This is what makes the Pope’s remarks in Malabo – to an audience that included President Obiang Nguema, a despot who has been at the helm since 1979 – so quietly explosive.

When he said justice must uphold human dignity, he was confronting a continental illusion whereby repression becomes legitimate if it passes through courts and prisons.

But it does not. A prison term that is handed down in a compromised system is not justice. Similarly, a disappeared person is not a solved problem. This is simply repression wearing judicial robes.

To African governments, which are quick to invoke sovereignty when criticised, I say: Sovereignty does not equate to jailing your critics without consequence.

Pope Leo also spoke about rebuilding lives while in Malabo. Sadly, in Africa, prisons are still being used to destroy them.