On Africa Day, it is well worth noting that any given set of data visualisations reveal that African countries have thus far been spared the worst of Covid-19's direct effects, though the knock-on effects of global and local policy decisions are still to be fully accounted for.

In a unique contribution to understanding the variation in governance responses from different countries, Africa in Fact will be running a special 12-week digital edition of the journal with authors from six African countries - Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Nonetheless, six weeks after The Economist's first pessimistic article (linked above), the newspaper published another article titled "Why Covid-19 seems to spread more slowly in Africa", commending the Ghanaian government for its swift response.

The graphs below, produced by our in-house data specialist, Monique Bennett, annotate relevant policy interventions over time in each of the six African countries featured in our special edition.

Each country has very different screening, testing and contact-tracing capacities and strategies; the data presented on the graphs above is ultimately a reflection of those policy decisions, and a function of the number of tests completed.