How do I convert the name of a country to a continent with separate lists of current and outdate countries

Question

How could I convert country name to continent name in a list of countries, some currently in existence and others no longer existing (ex. USSR)?

I have a table of data from countries around the world spanning the last fifty years. I want to add a new column that mimics the column of listed countries and then converts the country name into its corresponding continent.

I've made a function using pycountry_convert but it only can take input of countries currently in existence. There is a pycountry tool that handles "historical" names of countries that no longer exist (ex: USSR) but the list doesn't include countries in existence. I think my country_to_continent() function needs the ability to test inputs against either list, active or inactive countries, but I'm not sure what that would look like.

# country_to_continent takes country_name, converts it to an alpha code and then
# looks up the continent using the alpha code.
def country_to_continent(country_name):
    country_alpha2 = pc.country_name_to_country_alpha2(country_name)
    country_continent_code = pc.country_alpha2_to_continent_code(country_alpha2)
    country_continent_name = pc.convert_continent_code_to_continent_name(country_continent_code)
    return country_continent_name

#create new column
hivdata.insert(1,"column1", np.nan)
#new column replicates first column indexing by country name
hivdata["column1"] = hivdata['Estimated HIV Prevalence% - (Ages 15-49)']
#apply function to column 1
hivdata['column1'] = hivdata['column1'].apply(country_to_continent)

Error:

     70     if cn_name not in dict_country_name_to_country_alpha2:
---> 71         raise KeyError("Invalid Country Name: '{0}'".format(cn_name))
     72
     73     return dict_country_name_to_country_alpha2[cn_name]

KeyError: "Invalid Country Name: 'Abkhazia'"

Answer 1

I check first if the country name is in the list of countries that can be transformed and the ones that I don't have information I return as continent Unknown.

#!pip install pycountry-convert
from pycountry_convert import country_alpha2_to_continent_code,country_name_to_country_alpha2
import pycountry

def country_2_continent(country_name):
  country_exists=pycountry.countries.get(name=country_name)
  if country_exists is not None:
    country_alpha2=country_name_to_country_alpha2(country_name,cn_name_format="default")
    continent=country_alpha2_to_continent_code(country_alpha2)
  else:
    continent='Unknown'
  return continent