February 21, 2025
Oil production plays an important role in the economy of many African countries. The chart shows oil rents as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) for the nine African nations most reliant on it.
Libya ranks first, with oil rents equivalent to 56% of its GDP in 2021, followed by Congo at 34% and Angola at 28%. Despite being Africa’s largest oil producer, Nigeria’s oil rents are just 6.2% of its GDP.
Despite this, these countries’ oil production is relatively modest on a global scale. In 2021, their combined output was less than half of what the United States, the world’s top producer, extracted.
Today
The concept of “leapfrogging” is popular in development. It suggests that, as they develop, lower-income countries can skip intermediate technologies or systems and go straight to the modern equivalent.
One example of this is the use of landlines and mobile phones.
The landline telephone was invented in 1876 and became a dominant form of communication across Europe and North America. As you can see in the chart, it was increasingly adopted in the United States and the United Kingdom throughout the 20th century.
However, mobile phone adoption increased rapidly in the 1990s, and landlines have declined since the millennium. Mobile phones have become a substitute.
But many countries have almost skipped landline adoption entirely. Ghana and Nigeria are good examples: landline subscriptions have remained extremely low, and instead, mobile phone adoption has exploded.
April 9
Even after years of working with global health data, one statistic that I’m always struck by is the number of people who die by suicide every year. In 2023, it was estimated to be around three-quarters of a million.
That means suicides account for more than 1 in every 100 deaths in the world.
But a world where so many die from suicide is not inevitable. We know this because global suicide rates have fallen by an estimated 40% since the 1990s.
You can see this in the chart: rates have fallen from 15 to 9 deaths per 100,000 people over the last thirty years.
The large differences between countries also suggest that there are things that can be done to reduce this number even further.
April 7
Some technologies central to the clean energy transition depend on rare earth elements. The permanent magnets found in many electric vehicle motors and wind turbine generators rely on them. They are also used in some military hardware.
China dominates global production of rare earths; in 2024, it accounted for nearly 70% of the global total.
But the picture is not as concentrated when you examine which countries have rare-earth reserves. That is what the chart shows, plotting production and reserve shares side by side. China still holds the most known reserves, but at 49%, this is substantially lower than its production share.
Brazil holds 23% of reserves and is barely mining them. India, Vietnam, and Russia also hold significant reserves, but only a small fraction of current output.
The large gap between where reserves are located and where mining occurs partly reflects China's early investment in mining infrastructure and processing capacity, which other producers have not yet matched. Other countries hold the geological potential but have not yet developed the infrastructure to convert it into production at scale.
April 4
Child mortality rates in China have fallen from more than 20% in 1950 to less than 1% today.
But this steady progress was interrupted in the late 1950s during the “Great Leap Forward”. This was China’s national plan to industrialize rapidly, but it resulted in widespread famine and economic turmoil.
As the chart shows, child mortality rates spiked in China over this period, with up to one in three children dying before reaching the age of five. This change was so dramatic that it is also clearly visible in the global trend.
This data comes from the UN’s World Population Prospects.
April 2
Around 4 in 10 women worldwide live in countries where abortion is illegal or highly restricted. But these bans do not stop abortions completely; many women still get them, but in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
A study published in The Lancet estimated that 45% of abortions globally are unsafe. In some regions, the share is estimated to be around three-quarters. You can see this in the chart.
This data is around ten years old, but represents the latest estimates available (suggesting that this topic gets very little attention).
Unsafe abortions dramatically increase the health risks for women. Safe abortions have very low mortality rates, typically below 1 death per 100,000 abortions.
In regions where the majority of abortions are unsafe, mortality rates can be several hundred times higher; in Western and Middle Africa, around 1 in 200 abortions result in the woman dying.
It’s estimated that approximately 8% of maternal deaths in the world are caused by unsafe abortions. That’s 23,000 women every year.
March 31
Depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems are common everywhere. They are not confined to any particular income level.
But access to care is rare. In much of the world, people who struggle with their mental health have almost no psychologists or psychiatrists to turn to.
Mental health care is scarce in all places, but it is much scarcer in poor countries. Governments in high-income countries spend about $66 per person per year on mental health care, as the chart shows. In low-income countries, that figure is $0.04.
This gap in spending reflects a gap in people. As the WHO’s latest Mental Health Atlas highlights, there is roughly one psychiatrist per million people in low-income countries. High-income countries have 70 times more.
A recent study in the Lancet Psychiatry estimated that globally, only 9% of people with major depressive disorder receive a “minimally adequate treatment”. In high-income countries, it is 27%; in Sub-Saharan Africa, just 2%.
Hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries live with treatable conditions and have no access to a psychologist or psychiatrist. It is one of the largest gaps in global health — and one that receives remarkably little attention or funding.
There are efforts to close this gap without waiting for the workforce to catch up. One approach is to train lay counsellors — people without formal clinical qualifications who learn to provide psychological support. Randomized trials in India and Zimbabwe have shown this can be effective for depression.
Another approach is to use technology: apps and, increasingly, AI-based tools that can extend the reach of limited clinical expertise. These are not substitutes for a functioning mental health system, but in places where that system barely exists, they offer a starting point.
March 28
There are two ways to produce seafood: catch fish in the wild or farm your own. Seafood farming is often called “aquaculture”. Aquaculture is dominated by the farming of fish, but also includes other organisms, such as crustaceans and aquatic plants.
Aquaculture has grown rapidly over the last few decades. In fact, as the chart shows, it has overtaken wild catch since 2013.
This has relieved some pressure on wild fish stocks: if this increased demand for fish had been satisfied by wild catch, then many more would be severely overexploited.
