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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Datasets in the South African National Election Study series from the Democracy in Africa Research Unit at the University of Cape Town
Data from the South African Department of Basic Education.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
The Rapid Mortality Mobile Phone Surveys (RaMMPS) https://www.lshtm.ac.uk//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.
Datasets from surveys conducted by Research ICT Africa
Qualitative datasets produced by the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development Project at the University of Cape Town
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.
Datasets from the School of Built Environment and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal
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.
This collection is a comprehensive set of time series datasets from South African government agencies and other sources.
Datasets produced by the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town
Statistics South Africa is South Africa's national statistics agency. DataFirst shares Statistics South Africa's data and creates useful metadata to help researchers to use these official datasets.
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
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.
This collection comprises datasets from once-off Africa-focused social research of University Projects or Research Institutions around the world.
This collection shows restricted-access datasets that are available via DataFirst's secure Remote Access Data Enclave. 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.
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