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COVID-19 and development in Africa

The geographical distribution of case-fatality levels revealed the particular situation of the Sahelian strip, except
Senegal, as well as a strip ranging from Angola to Tanzania, and to a lesser extent, certain countries of North Africa
(Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia). Therefore, there was little geographical correspondence between incidence and case fatality,
and at the statistical level, the correlation between incidence and case fatality was weakly negative (Ρ = −0.22), which
implies that countries with high incidence had lower case fatality.
3.6. Correlations with Demographic Factors

This section explores the correlations between demographic parameters and the incidence of COVID-19. In a classic
demographic transition framework, one would expect an inverse correlation: The further the country is in the transition,
the more developed it is, and therefore the lower the incidence should be. The same goes for economic development.
The figure in this section (Figure 5) is presented according to this framework, with the values corresponding to the most
advanced situations in terms of development on the right side, that is to say, that one would expect relations parallel to the
second bisector, but one finds in fact the opposite relation in most cases.

3.6.1. Population density
The relationship with population density was expected to be complex. On the one hand, economic development implies
generally demographic growth, urbanization, densification, and concentration of the population, but a high population

Figure 4. Geographical distribution of case-fatality rate of COVID-19 (as of August 15, 2020).

Figure 5. Relationship between COVID-19 incidence and selected demographic and economic development indicators, 56 African
countries.

8 International Journal of Population Studies | 2020, Volume 6, Issue 2