By Martin Plaut BBC Africa analyst

African governments have reduced petrol subsidies

The International Monetary Fund says African countries - even those that are not oil producers - are dealing better with the current rising price of oil than they did during similar price hikes in previous years.

"We have had no requests for additional finance, to cope with the oil increases," Sanjeev Gupta, Assistant Director of the IMF's African department told the BBC.

Mr Gupta puts this down to a number of factors:

• The rising price of other commodities, such as copper and gold, which has helped cushion the blow for those African countries that are mineral exporters

• The higher foreign currency reserves carried by many African countries. From 1997 to 2001, the continent as a whole had an average of just 3.7 months of imports in reserve. That figure rose to 4.8 months in 2005 and is predicted to reach 5.6 months in 2006

• An increased willingness to pass rising prices of petroleum products on to consumers. This not only reduces demand, but also allows government budgets to be maintained. Previously, prices were held down by subsidies from government funds

"Overall, we are seeing a greater resilience from African economies," Mr Gupta said.

A number of countries have tried to find alternative means of cushioning the blow for some of the poorest members of society.

Growth maintained

Mr Gupta cited Ghana as an example, saying it had provided improved transport for some of the urban poor and removed fees for primary schools, as ways of helping families deal with the rising cost of fuel.

This is not to suggest that all the impact of higher oil prices can be avoided.

The IMF says a number of oil importing countries saw inflation stoked by the rising cost of petroleum products.

Among these are Zimbabwe (which has seen severe fuel shortages), Burundi, Seychelles and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But despite this, oil-importing African states managed to maintain their growth in 2005 at an average of 4.9%.

And the IMF predicts that real growth per person should be about the same in 2006 as it was in the previous year: 3.4%.

Debt write-off

Two other factors that are not cited by the IMF may also have played a part: the decline in Africa's debt burden as the continent's debts are written off, and the planned expansion of aid promised last year by the G8 group of most-developed nations.

Africa's overall debt has fallen from $74.8bn in 2001 to $50.4bn in 2005.

Once the Nigerian debt write-off and its debt repayment appears in the calculations, this position will improve even further.

Of course, the rising price of oil has been a huge boost to the continent's nine net oil producers.

Angola, the Republic of Congo, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Gabon, Cameroon and Ivory Coast have all benefited very substantially from these price increases.