The Spatiotemporal Coupling and Synergistic Evolution of Economic Resilience and Ecological Resilience in Africa

Investigating the spatiotemporal coupling and coordinated evolution of economic and ecological resilience in Africa provides theoretical support and scientific foundation for the continent’s green and high-quality development. From the perspective of evolutionary resilience, this study constructs an evaluation model for Africa’s economic resilience and ecological resilience. Using kernel density models, namely the “economic-ecological” resilience zoning method, the coupling coordination degree model, and the Haken model, this study explores the spatiotemporal alignment, coupling, and synergistic evolution of economic and ecological resilience in Africa in a step-by-step manner. The results show that (1) the overall level of economic resilience in Africa is relatively low, with increasing regional disparities. Spatially, economic resilience exhibits a distribution pattern of “low values widely spread, high values concentrated”; the level of ecological resilience, in contrast, shows a more pronounced dispersion, with a spatial distribution of “low values concentrated, high values dispersed”; (2) based on the “economic-ecological” resilience zoning method, most African countries and regions fall into the low economic resilience category, with weak economic resilience and prominent issues related to economic instability. The seven major high economic resilience zones largely overlap with the high economic resilience-high ecological resilience areas, demonstrating good spatiotemporal alignment between economic and ecological resilience; (3) in terms of the spatiotemporal coupling relationship between economic resilience and ecological resilience, most of Africa falls into the disordered category, with an increasingly obvious polarization trend in the coupling coordination degree; (4) from the perspective of the synergistic relationship between economic resilience and ecological resilience, ecological resilience dominates the symbiotic system formed by economic resilience and ecological resilience. The development of ecological resilience and economic resilience is mutually inhibitive, with prominent contradictions between the economy and the environment. Ecological and economic resilience have formed an internal mechanism of positive feedback in the synergistic system. The regional differences in the synergistic value have expanded, while the differences within regions have narrowed, indicating an emerging trend of spatial differentiation.