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 infamous Great Recession. a in The COVID-19 recession began in February 2020, when most of the world had issued lockdowns.

stress that will be examined are the Asian Currency Crisis,

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

First Impressions

A Closer Look

The analysis revealed several key insights:

“Not Like Us" demonstrates an unusually high growth rate of 0.72, significantly outpacing the typical range (0.58-0.65) seen in both artists' top-performing tracks.
Drake's catalog shows impressive overall numbers. With over 3.3 billion streams, his most popular song “One Dance" has a billion stream lead over Kendrick’s most popular “HUMBLE.” However, the dancehall megahit has a growth rate of 0.643 which falls within the typical range of popular songs for both.
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).

*Click/hover to reveal more information.

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the quantified Conclusion

If Mr. Graham’s argument is that Kendrick’s song was “unusually successful” there’s plenty of data to support it. However, if he wants to prove the smash hit was an inside job, he’ll likely need more compelling evidence in court. The song’s viral success doesn't necessarily indicate artificial manipulation - it could just as easily mean that Kendrick’s release strategy (or lack thereof) works exceptionally well for him, or simply that a release from an anticipated artist resonated strongly with listeners.

Note: Analysis conducted using R with tidyverse and ggplot2, examining Spotify streaming data from both artists' catalogs.

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