Collections

DataFirst Collections

African Centre for Cities

The African Centre for Cities (ACC) is a research hub at the University of Cape Town that undertakes interdisciplinary research on urban environments. Datasets in this collection are from several collaborative ACC-based research projects.

8 datasets

African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research

The African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research (ACEIR) is a research grouping of eminent African scholars based Southern, East and West Africa. Participating institutions are the University of Cape Town (SALDRU), the University of Ghana, Legon, (ISSER), and the University of Nairobi (School of Economics). This collection highlights important datasets for poverty and inequality research for Southern African node researchers.

28 datasets

African Foundational Learning Data

AFLEARN is a project that focuses on African foundational learning data, measurement, research and capacity building. Funded by the Gates Foundation, the project aims to improve learning outcomes for children across Africa by supporting the effective use of foundational learning data for evidence-based advocacy and policy making. We aim to: Create an African hub of foundational learning data and expertise in methods, measurement, data quality and comparability. Empower African organizations and ministries to utilize such data for evidence-based advocacy and policymaking. Support an African research agenda by expanding and capacitating the group of researchers working on foundational learning. Read about the AFLEARN project at https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/aflearn and download African foundational learning data from our data site under the AFLEARN dataset Collection

1 datasets

African Research Replication and Reproducibility Data

These datasets include data and code that underlie published research on South Africa and other African countries. The data and code are made available by authors and publishers to support replication, reproducibility, and transparency in African research

10 datasets

Afrobarometer

Afrobarometer is a research network that conducts public opinion surveys in African countries on democracy and governance. The surveys have been undertaken at periodic intervals since 1999. Afrobarometer coverage has increased over time. Round 1 (1999-2001) covered 7 countries and was later extended to 12 countries. Round 2 (2002-2004) covered 16 countries, Round 3 (2005-2006) 18, Round 4 (2008) 20, Round 5 (2011-2013) 34, Round 6 (2014-2015) 36, Round 7 (2016-2018) 34 and Round 8 (2022) 34.

15 datasets

ALPHA Network

The ALPHA (Analysing Longitudinal Population-based HIV/AIDS Data in Africa) Network is a collaboration among 10 longitudinal studies in Sub-Saharan Africa. These studies collect data on HIV infection alongside demographic, behavioural, socio-economic, and clinical data from residents of the study areas. The Network harmonises the data and conducts comparable and pooled analyses on HIV.

4 datasets

Asenze Study

The Asenze Study is a longitudinal, population-based cohort study conducted in a peri-urban area outside Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The survey was of eligible caregivers with children aged 4-6 years, and focused on child neurodevelopment, cognitive function, behavioural problems, and the physical and mental health (including HIV status) of both children and their caregivers. The study assessed physical and mental health, cognitive function and neurodevelopment, and social and behavioral factors, offering a comprehensive analysis of the biological, environmental, and social determinants of health.

1 datasets

DataDrive2030

DataDrive2030 is a South African based social enterprise that supports the collection and use of high-quality data to drive improved child outcomes in the first 6 years of life.

6 datasets

DataFirst - Harmonised Dataset Series

This collection comprises harmonised stacked datasets created by DataFirst and other collaborators. The collection currently includes four harmonised datasets. Harmonised South African datasets are the Employers and Self-Employed Series 2001-2013, the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series (PALMS) 1993-2025 and the Post-Apartheid Socio-Economic Series (PASES) 1995-2024. Other harmonised data includes the Ghanaian Establishment Panel Study 2003-2014 created using official data from the Ghana Statistical Service.

6 datasets

Democracy in Africa Research Unit

Datasets in the South African National Election Study series from the Democracy in Africa Research Unit at the University of Cape Town

7 datasets

Financial Sector Deepening Zambia

FSD Zambia is a Zambian organisation working closely with key players throughout the economy to ensure that all Zambians are financially healthy, particularly the most excluded and under-served. We help rural families, women, youth, low income people, and other households in Zambia to understand and access a wide range of sustainable, comparable and affordable financial services. To expand financial inclusion, we collaborate with public and private sector institutions to make financial markets work better. FSD Zambia enhances trust between clients and suppliers of financial services by helping to increase their understanding, expand innovation, and lower costs. In this way all women, men, girls and boys can learn about, choose, and use a wide range of financial services according to their needs.

7 datasets

Gauteng City-Region Observatory

The Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) is a partnership of the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand, the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG), and organised local government in Gauteng (SALGA-Gauteng). The GCRO’s page gives access to their biennial Quality of Life (QOL) survey. The survey measures the quality of life, socio-economic circumstances, attitudes to service delivery, and other characteristics of residents of the Gauteng City-Region to provide a rich information resource for policymakers and the public wanting to see where progress is being made, and where concerns remain.

9 datasets

Hungry Cities Partnership

The Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP) is an international network that conducts collaborative research, training and advocacy with the objective of providing innovative solutions to the challenge of building sustainable cities and policies and programmes that promote food security in cities. The Hungry Cities datasets provided here are from surveys of households and food outlets in 6 African Cities, Nairobi, Kenya; Maputo, Mozambique; Windhoek, Namibia and Cape Town, South Africa.

4 datasets

Institute for Justice and Reconciliation - South African Reconciliation Barometer

The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) was launched in 2000 after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa and works towards building fair, inclusive, democratic and peaceful societies in Africa. The IJR has been conducting the South African Reconciliation Barometer (SARB) since 2003. The SARB is a nationally representative public opinion survey on issues of reconciliation, social cohesion, and governance. Datasets from the merged 2003-2015 (Rounds 1-14) are available here, as well as the latest rounds conducted every second year since 2017.

5 datasets

Institute for Social and Economic Research

This collection features historical data from an early survey, the Keiskammahoek Rural Survey (1947-1952) which records changes in rural Keiskammahoek from the establishment of the apartheid regime in 1948. The data was digitised from survey questionnaires held in the Corey Library at Rhodes University, in a collaborative project between DataFirst and the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) in the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) and the Corey Library.

2 datasets

Laboratório Urbano de Angola/ Angolan Urban Laboratory

The Angolan Urban Laboratory/ Laboratório Urbano de Angola (LURA) studies urban areas in Angola with high population densities that have neighbouring informal settlements (Musseques) (Luanda, Lubango, Huambo and Cabinda). The aim is to investigate and report on ways to integrate informal settlements into the formal urban fabric of the country. A second aim is to create an urban database to be shared with stakeholders to serve as a monitoring tool in the implementation of the SDGs as well as other global and local urban policies in Angola.

3 datasets

Living Off-Grid Food and Infrastructure Collaboration

The Living Off-Grid Food and Infrastructure Collaboration (LOGIC) data comes from research undertaken by this multi-country, multi-institution collaboration to help improve the lives of the poorest residents of five cities in Africa and Asia by focusing on how they meet their basic needs and how they access infrastructure. The LOGIC datasets cover the social and material systems that drive food and infrastructure access across five cities, three African cities (Tamale, Ghana; Mossel Bay, South Africa; Harare, Zimbabwe) and two Asian cities (Bengaluru, India; Colombo, Sri Lanka).

1 datasets

Mzantsi Wakho Data

Mzantsi Wakho is a longitudinal, mixed-methods community study of adolescents living with HIV in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa The study contains data from 1 563 adolescents (1 046 living with HIV at baseline). Data were collected over three survey waves (Wave 1: 2014–2015; Wave 2: 2016–2017; Wave 3: 2017–2018), combining self-reported questionnaires, clinic record abstraction, and facility-level service profiling — allowing analysis of temporal trends in resilience, treatment adherence, and service utilization. However, the data shared here relates to the self-reported questionnaires only.

1 datasets

National Income Dynamics Study

The National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), is the first national panel study in South Africa. NIDS is initiated and funded by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation of the Government of South Africa. The survey project implementer is the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town.

5 datasets

National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey

The National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile (NIDS-CRAM) Survey was a telephonic follow up survey of a sub-sample of household residents from NIDS Wave 5 (2017) that was conducted during the pandemic period in South Africa in 2020-2021. The survey collected data on employment, hunger, migration, grant-receipt, and demographics, as well as COVID-19 risk perceptions and behaviour. The survey data will provide policy-makers and the public with rapid, reliable panel data on key measures of individual and household welfare.

5 datasets

NRSLR Programme Domestic Electrical Load Study

The Domestic Electrical Load Study data includes electricity meter readings and survey data from sampled SA households collected by the National Rationalised Specification Load Research (NRSLR) Programme. The NRSLR programme was a joint government-academia initiative which ran from 1994 to 2014.

4 datasets

Other Open Research Data

This collection comprises datasets from once-off Africa-focused social research of University Projects or Research Institutions around the world.

60 datasets

People's Action for Learning Network

The People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network is a south-south partnership of 17 member organisations working to promote children’s foundational learning across Africa, Asia, and America. PAL Network members conduct citizen-led assessments (CLAs) and learning intervention programmes (actions) aimed at improving learning outcomes. The International Common Assessment of Numeracy (ICAN) and Reading (ICAR) initiative is the PAL Networks global effort to generate robust, comparable, and inclusive data on children’s foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN).

1 datasets

Rapid Mortality Mobile Phone Surveys

The Rapid Mortality Mobile Phone Surveys (RaMMPS) project is a collaboration between 13 partners to develop methods for and collect mortality data in LMICs using phone surveys. To date, surveys have been conducted in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Malawi and Mozambique. The datasets made available through this collection are for non-commercial use.

1 datasets

Remote Access Data Enclave

This collection shows restricted-access datasets that are available through a secure Remote Access Data Enclave operated by DataFirst. This data is too sensitive to publish online. But the data is valuable for data intensive policy research and is therefore made available to accredited researchers in a secure remote access environment.

37 datasets

Research ICT Africa

Datasets from surveys conducted by Research ICT Africa

4 datasets

Research on Open Educational Resources for Development

Qualitative datasets produced by the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development Project at the University of Cape Town

7 datasets

Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products

The Research unit on the Economics of Excisable Products (REEP) at the University of Cape Town undertakes research on alcohol, unhealthy food and tobacco policies to help limit their consumption and prevent non-communicable diseases. Among others, REEP manages the Data on Aliments, Tobacco and Alcohol (DATA) in Africa Project which collects, archives and disseminate economic data on alcohol, unhealthy food and tobacco to assist research to support policies on these excisable products.

15 datasets

School of Built Environment and Development Studies

Datasets from the School of Built Environment and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal

4 datasets

South African Audience Research Foundation

The All Media and Products Survey (AMPS) conducted by the South African Audience Research Foundation in the 1990s and up to 2015 measures the audiences of all traditional media in South Africa. Non-current versions of AMPS are made available for academic research only.

15 datasets

South African Demographic and Health Surveys

The South Africa Demographic and Health Surveys are nationally representative household surveys that collect demographic and health data for South Africa. The 1987 round was implemented by the Human Sciences Research Council. The 1998 survey was implemented by the Department of Health with the Medical Research Council and with technical assistance from Macro International. The 2016 survey was implemented by Statistics South Africa with the South African Medical Research Council and with technical assistance from ICF through The USAID funded DHS Program. A 2003 survey was also conducted, but its data is not publicly available. Together, the documented rounds provide indicators on fertility, infant and childhood mortality, family planning, maternal and child health, adult health, and related topics.

3 datasets

South African Department of Basic Education

This collection is data produced by the South African Department of Basic Education (DBE). The DBE oversees South African schools from Grade R to Grade 12, as well as adult literacy programmes. DBE datasets include data from school administrative and monitoring systems - such as the Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System (LURITS) - as well as data from school surveys, such the Early Childhood Development Census and the Early Grade Reading Study.

32 datasets

South African Time Series

This collection is a comprehensive set of time series datasets from South African government agencies and other sources.

7 datasets

Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit

Datasets produced by the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town

17 datasets

TIMSS and PIRLS

Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) datasets are from international assessments that monitor trends in student achievement in mathematics, science, and reading. Currently 70 countries participate in the assessments, which have been conducted at regular intervals since 1995

10 datasets

WORLD Policy Analysis Center

The WORLD Policy Analysis Center (WORLD) is committed to improving the quantity and quality of globally comparative data available to policymakers, citizens, civil society, and researchers on laws and policies that work to support human rights, including economic opportunity, social and civic engagement, human health, development, well-being, and equity. WORLD has built the largest independent source of data on national laws and policies that matter to health, economic security, education, and equal opportunities with thousands of quantitative measures for all 193 UN member states. Longitudinal data on laws and policies in this collection highlight the progress African countries have made over the past 20 to 30 years in advancing legal rights that matter to childhood and gender equality. This data enables researchers to test questions about the impact of different policy design at scale.

19 datasets

Data Discovery Collection

This collection comprises detailed metadata records for datasets not shared directly by DataFirst but openly available from another African repository.

35 datasets

Statistics South Africa

Civil Registration Data

Civil registration Data includes administrative records of births, deaths, marriages, and divorces in the country. Statistics South Africa compiles vital statistics datasets from data collected through the civil registration system and administrative records. This collection includes data on recorded live births and marriages from the SA Department of Home Affairs, as well as divorce records provided to Statistics SA by the SA Department of Justice and Constitutional Development from various regional courts.

23 datasets

Governance, Public Safety and Justice Data

This collection contains the Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey (GPSJS) and the Victims of Crime Survey (VCS). The GPSJS is a countrywide household-based survey that collects data on two types of crimes, namely, vehicle hijacking and home robbery. Business robbery is not covered by the survey. The VCS is a countrywide household-based survey that collects data on the prevalence of particular kinds of crime within South Africa. The survey includes information on victimisation experienced by individuals and households and their perspectives on community responses to crime

15 datasets

South African Household Survey Data

This collection brings together datasets from household surveys conducted by the South African government statistics agency, Statistics South Africa (STATS SA). These include data from the now discontinued October Household Survey and the current General Household Survey. The October Household Survey (OHS) was an annual household survey conducted by STATS SA from 1993 to 1999. It covers a range of development indicators, including unemployment rates (official and expanded), according to standard definitions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The General Household Survey (GHS) is an annual household survey conducted by STATS SA from 2002, which measures the living circumstances of South African households. The GHS collects data on education, health and social development, housing, access to services and facilities, food security, and agriculture. The Living Conditions Survey (LCS) is also included.

34 datasets

South African Income Survey Data

The Income and Expenditure Survey (IES) is conducted every five years in South Africa. The main purpose of the survey is to determine the average expenditure patterns of households in different areas of the country. This survey forms the basis for the determination of the “basket” of consumer goods and services used for the calculation of the Consumer Price Index.

6 datasets

South African Labour Force Survey Data

The Labour Force Survey (LFS) was a twice-yearly household-based sample survey conducted by the South African government statistics agency, Statistics South Africa. The survey was conducted in March and September of each year from 2002 to 2007. The LFS was replaced by the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), which is conducted by Statistics SA on a quarterly basis. The QLFS collects data on the labour market activities of individuals aged 15 years and older who live in South Africa. The Labour Market Dynamics in South Africa dataset contains annualised QLFS data. The Survey of Employers and the Self-employed (SESE) is an enterprise-based survey that collects data on micro- and small businesses in South Africa. This collection also includes the Survey of Activities of Young People (SAYP), the Time Use Survey (TUS), and the Volunteer Activities Survey (VAS).

126 datasets

South African Population Censuses and Surveys

This collection brings together South African population census datasets and other population datasets. It includes South African population census data from 1960, as well as Community Survey datasets, which replaced the SA census in interim years. Early Current Population Survey data is also included. The South African population censuses are an enumeration of the population and housing in South Africa. The census collects data on dwellings and individuals' demographic, family, and employment details. The Community Survey is a nationally representative, large-scale household survey that is designed to provide information on the extent of poor households in South Africa, their access to services, and levels of unemployment at national, provincial, and municipal levels.

15 datasets

South African Tourism Survey Data

The Domestic Tourism Survey is a large-scale household survey aimed at collecting accurate statistics on the travel behaviour and expenditure of South African residents travelling within the borders of the country. The following information was collected: Domestic day and overnight trips undertaken; trips undertaken by respondents and trips by other household members without the respondent accompanying them; the profile of the most recent day/overnight domestic trips undertaken both by the respondent and other household members (detailing information on destination, trip length, purpose of visit, accommodation, transport, activities, trip expenditure, etc.) and socio-demographic information.

17 datasets

Transport Survey Data

The National Household Travel Survey is designed to assess domestic transport and tourism travel patterns of South African households as well as their attitudes about transport. The target population includes all private households in the nine South African provinces as well as residents of worker hostels. The survey excludes student hostels, old-age homes, hospitals, prisons, and military barracks.

3 datasets

Other African Data

African Government Microdata Sites

This Collection relates to the microdata repositories of African National Statistics Agencies that share data as public use or non-commercial use data. The aim of the Collection is to help researchers discover sources of accessible and usable official data from African governments

6 datasets