During the African Debit Crisis, neopatrimonialism showed various signs of weakness. As African countries accumulated massive amounts of debt caused by global recession and inflation from the OPEC oil embargo, the neopatrimonialist links that helped solidify legitimacy for regimes began to weaken. African countries had relied so heavily on foreign aid and loans as source of government income that when these resources dried up, regimes could no longer pay off the people they been paying or provide government jobs for those they had because regimes did not have the money to do so.