I think I’m due a data post. I’ve been searching for some relevant good looking data but I think this one’ll do for now. I fully do not agree going through with serious regression analysis because it will take me some precious hours (and will involve me working with STATA which I’m trying to avoid at the moment). Plus, people online like them some simple graphs.

I’ll start with inflation. The current plight of sub-Saharan Africa is everything to do with price hikes. Below is a graph comparing inflation from around 1965 to 2012.

(PS: You can click on all graphs to enlarge them)

Angola had some major inflation in mid-90s compared to the rest of the countries. They all seem to behave after 2000. At least until you expand the graph to explore between 2005 and 2012.

Ethiopia seems to be leading the race with around 30% inflation (this is bad!) while the East African crew (Kenya, Uganda & Tanzania) are following up close-by with inflation of between 10-20%. Notice however the slope of Ethiopia’s rise.

Let’s take a look at the gender imbalance (hopefully the lack thereof) in the respective parliaments. Coming from a parent who studies Gender issues hopefully this will get me off the hot seat.

In general, gender equality seems to be on the rise (at least in terms of parliamentary seats). I found it surprising that Rwanda has around 55% of it’s parliament consisting of women. That’s pretty impressive. To those who know Rwanda, this isn’t surprising considering the amount of progress they’ve achieved in the last 15 or so years.

It’s noteworthy to consider Nigeria’s position. I’m surprised they have such a high gender imbalance. It seems to have been under 10% from the beginning with no significant signs of improvement.

I also had to consider the aid flow from around 2000. The massive spike you see below is Nigeria sudden massive increase in aid around mid 2000s with its consequent and similar decline.

This next bit includes my favourite graph. It shows the relationship between external debt to gross national income. Total external debt is the sum of public, publicly guaranteed, and private nonguaranteed long-term debt, use of IMF credit, and short-term debt. Short-term debt includes all debt having an original maturity of one year or less and interest in arrears on long-term debt. GNI (formerly GNP) is the sum of value added by all resident producers plus any product taxes (less subsidies) not included in the valuation of output plus net receipts of primary income (compensation of employees and property income) from abroad.

The graph is from 1970 to show the full picture of these countries’ journey through the debt burden.

It’s not surprising that all countries had a sudden decrease in the ratio around mid 2000s. There was a debt forgiveness agreement during G8 summit in 2005.

Finally, let’s see my least favourite graph. Internet subscribers for every 100 people would be a good way to see how far the technology spread has been so far. I chose to start from 2005 because all the countries before that had less than 0.1 subscribers per 100 people.

While the countries involved have less than 1% of it’s population subscribed to the internet, Namibia and Botswana seem to separate themselves from the pack by showing an impressive spike. The rest seem to have somewhat of an increase but nothing deviating enough from the norm to attract attention. Except the dead last in the pack, never showing any improvement for nearly 10 years is Tanzania. No surprises there.