To the article's credit it actually differentiates between first world ("high income") countries and the rest of the world. The growth has been even more in high income countries so that explanation doesn't work for the data in the article.
Yes, I'm aware of that. I wasn't talking specifically about the data in the article but about Python's growth in general. I don't believe the popularity of a tag in a forum is a reliable indicator of the growth of a language, it may simply be this forum becoming more popular among Python users.
Python's rising popularity among the scientific computing community is simply not enough to support the idea of a dramatic increase in Python adoption. As a long-time user of the language I share your appreciation Python usage in the industry has not dramatically increased in the past few years.
On the other hand, there's plenty of evidence suggesting Python is becoming increasingly popular outside high income countries.