mtwesley/africa-visa-liberalization

Regression and network analysis of recent visa policy initiatives and economic development in Africa # Africa Visa Liberalization This project applies regression and network analysis to explore the relationship between visa openness, passport power, and economic development across African countries, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. It combines datasets on: - Africa Visa Openness Index (2019, 2023) - Passport Index (2019, 2023) - Henley Passport Index (2025) - GDP per capita (2019–2023) - Country metadata (region, income group) ## Key Questions - How open are African countries to each other and the world? - Does increased visa openness or passport strength associate with higher GDP per capita? - Which countries are most central in Africa’s mobility network? - How has access changed from 2019 to 2023? ## Methods - **Data Cleaning + Merging** All datasets are joined by ISO3 country codes into a unified panel - **Statistical Modeling** Regressions of log GDP per capita on: - Visa openness score - Henley score - Centrality measures (Katz, PageRank, etc.) - With controls for region and income group - **Network Analysis** Directed graphs built from passport data (origin → destination access). Centrality measures computed using NetworkX - **Visualization** Mobility networks rendered using matplotlib and NetworkX, with nodes colored by income group and sized by GDP ## Inputs - `input/africa_visa_openness_2019.csv` - `input/africa_visa_openness_2023.csv` - `input/country_region_income_group.csv` - `input/gdp_per_capita_2019_2023.csv` - `input/henley_passport_index_2025.csv` - `input/passport-index-2019.csv` - `input/passport-index-2023.csv` ## Outputs - `output/dataset.csv` — Unified country-level dataset (cleaned and merged) - `output/sub_saharan_africa_network.png` — Network of visa access in Sub-Saharan Africa (2023) - `output/avoi_score_north_africa_2023.png` — Visa Openness Score by Country: North Africa (2023) - `output/avoi_score_sub_saharan_africa_2023.png` — Visa Openness Score by Country: Sub-Saharan Africa (2023) - `output/correlations_2019.png` …