About openAFRICA

openAFRICA aims to be the largest independent repository of open data on the African continent.

openAFRICA is not a government portal. Instead, it’s a grassroots initiative, maintained by Code for Africa, as a public service. The platform is available as a free resource for ordinary citizens, civil society organisations, civic activists, the media, and government agencies.

You can upload your data to openAFRICA either to store it, or to make it available to a wider public. You can also download data already on openAFRICA for re-use in your own projects. We are happy to help you both upload and re-use data.

Much of the data on openAFRICA has been liberated by pioneering organisations, volunteers or activists, and is an eclectic collection that is far from comprehensive. You will, however, find datasets here that are difficult to access elsewhere. If there is crucial data that you can't find here or elsewhere, get in touch and we might be able to help you extricate it.

All the data on openAFRICA is intended to be actionable. The data is meant to help you change the world. We want you to analyse it, visualise it, share it, and build tools or services with it.

openAFRICA is maintained by Code for Africa, with additional support from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the World Bank. Individual datasets or data collections on openAFRICA may receive support from additional partners.


Want to Support openAFRICA?

While openAFRICA runs as a free public service, it costs real money and time to maintain. Code for Africa is therefore always keen to hear from potential partners who are interested in helping support the initiative. Give us a shout here to chat about the possibilities.

Data Style Guide

We use ProPublica's Data Style Guide. This style guide comprises the typographic and technical best practices used by ProPublica's News Applications desk. Many rules on it apply to their stories as well as their online graphics and news applications.

Read it here: https://github.com/propublica/guides/blob/master/news-apps.md