The African continent has received much scrutiny for its perceived economic underperformance and seemingly endless waves of social and political strife. Yet, some of the countries that make up the continent have achieved undeniable growth, even in the midst of unprecedented global crises. I compared the economic growth of African nations under periods of global economic stress to determine which countries were most and least resilient, and identify which types of issues had the most impactful on the continental pocketbook.

Using a dataset that contains the GDPs of more than 30 African countries spanning back to 1960 from researcher, Umair Zia, and Kaggle user, Batros Jamali, along with data analysis in Python, I was able examine and compare the GDP growth rates of different African nations under periods of global financial stress.

Referencing this Reuters article on the biggest financial crises of global of the past four decades as well an article by the World Bank on the economic impacts of COVID-19, three periods of global financial stress were originally chosen for this observation: the Asian Currency Crisis of the late 1997, the global financial crisis of 2008 (Great Recession), and the recession resulting from COVID-19.

The Asian Currency Crisis took place in the mid to late 1990s when attempts to keep a Thai Baht pegged to the US dollar resulted in the depleted foreign currency reserves. The subsequent instability and rapid devaluation of multiple currencies in the region had a marked effect on the world economy.

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis was sparked by the collapse of the U.S. housing market and the subprime lending system. As financial institutions around the world teetered or failed, global credit froze, trade contracted, and economic growth stalled, the most severe worldwide recession since the 1930s was triggered.

Beginning in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a near-instant halt to global mobility and commerce. Widespread lockdowns, supply chain breakdowns, and emergency spending created economic shockwaves that disrupted major sectors, with developing countries facing health crises in conjunction with fiscal strain.

After putting a microscope on Africa over the course of these disasters, the results were surprising.

THE METHOD

1. IMPORT REQUIRED LIBRARIES:

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

2. LOAD AND PREPARE DATA:

# Read the African GDP dataset
df = pd.read_csv('../input/gdp-growth-of-african-countries/Africa_GDP.csv')

# Define major global crisis periods with unique colors
crisis_periods = {
    'Asian Crisis': {'period': (1997, 1998), 'color': 'orange', 'alpha': 0.2},
    'Global Financial Crisis': {'period': (2008, 2009), 'color': 'red', 'alpha': 0.2},
    'COVID-19': {'period': (2020, 2021), 'color': 'purple', 'alpha': 0.2}
}

3. CREATE VISUALIZATION:

# Set up the plot
plt.figure(figsize=(12, 6))

# Calculate mean GDP growth across all countries for each year
yearly_means = df.mean(axis=1, numeric_only=True)

# Plot the main trend line
plt.plot(df['Year'], yearly_means, marker='o', color='#1f77b4')

# Highlight crisis periods with different colors
for crisis, info in crisis_periods.items():
    plt.axvspan(info['period'][0], info['period'][1], 
                color=info['color'],
                alpha=info['alpha'],
                label=crisis)

# Add labels and formatting
plt.title('African GDP Growth and Major Global Crises')
plt.xlabel('Year')
plt.ylabel('Average GDP Growth Rate')
plt.legend()
plt.grid(True)
plt.show()

4. INITIAL OBSERVATIONS:

• The data reveals varying impacts of global crises on African economies

• African economies showed unexpected resilience during COVID-19

• An unexplained significant decline appears between 2014-2016

Impressions

The analysis revealed several key insights:

Africa didn’t flinch the way we expected during COVID.
In fact, some countries (Gabon, Zimbabwe, Sudan) grew. This counters the dominant “fragile Africa” narrative and hints at internal economic dynamics that helped buffer the blow, such as mobile banking, domestic agriculture, and relative insulation from global tourism dependency.
The Global Financial Crisis hit resource-exporting nations hard.
Oil-producing countries like Libya and Algeria saw sharp GDP drops. But Zimbabwe? Their economy skyrocketed up almost 119%. Some of this may reflect post-hyperinflation stabilization rather than true growth, but the contrast is striking.
The Asian Currency Crisis may have had a delayed adverse effect on the economies of African nations when compared with the rest of the world. This makes some intuitive sense as the catalyst for the crisis was the de-pegging of a major Southeast Asian currencies to the US dollar (to date; the Djiboutian Franc is the sole African currency to be fully pegged to the dollar).

The Phantom Crisis

*Click/hover to reveal more information.

* Although no official “crisis” occurred between 2014 and 2016, for African nations it was very much a period of great concern. This was the Commodity Price Crash. Oil prices tanked. Copper collapsed. And suddenly, Africa’s economic lifeblood was on its last legs.

the quantified Conclusion

African economies show distinct patterns of vulnerability to global economic shocks. Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda demonstrated exceptional resilience across multiple crisis periods, likely due to their more diversified economic structures. In contrast, resource-dependent nations like Libya, Gabon, Nigeria, and Algeria consistently ranked among the most vulnerable, showing sharp declines, especially during commodity price fluctuations.

The 2014-2016 Commodity Crisis proved especially damaging to these oil-exporting economies, with Nigeria experiencing a 29.53% contraction. Interestingly, some countries display puzzlingly inconsistent patterns: Zimbabwe swung from a severe decline during the Asian Crisis (-24.94%) to showing remarkable growth during the Global Financial Crisis (+118.90%), while Somalia showed surprising strength during certain downturns despite its fragile state status. COVID-19 revealed an unexpected pattern, with traditionally vulnerable economies like Gabon and South Africa demonstrating strong resilience, suggesting potential improvements in economic management over the years.

Africa’s biggest vulnerability (with respect to its economy) isn’t global finance or public health, it’s an overreliance on commodities. In every major shock, the hardest-hit countries were those whose economies were bound to oil, gas, or mineral exports. When commodity prices dip, national budgets of African states collapse. And the 2014–2016 slump, underreported and largely invisible to mainstream economic coverage, revealed the true extent of that exposure.

Meanwhile, countries with more diversified economies consistently showed remarkable resilience, even during global recessions that hampered wealthier nations. If we keep pretending Africa’s greatest economic threats come from the outside, and that they are powerless to deal with them, we’ll miss the point. The next meltdown for the continent might not be global in origin, it might actually stem from a bad quarter on the London Metal Exchange.

The question we should be asking isn't: “Can African economies survive global crises?”

It's: “Can they survive the economic addictions of their own making?”

Note: This analysis was conducted using Python 3 with the pandas, seaborn, and matplotlib libraries. GDP data was sourced from a publicly available dataset on Kaggle compiled by Umair Zia and Batros Jamali, covering 30+ African nations from 1960–2023.

Africa's Economic Linchpin: The Looming Threat of Commodities Dependency