News

To honour Francis Wilson’s legacy, two prizes of R10 000 each are awarded annually for outstanding research that makes innovative use of publicly available data. Closing date for submissions is 13 October.

On 7 August 2025, we co-hosted a data rescue event with RDAP and the ICPSR. More than 100 volunteers joined the hackathon, working collectively to prepare files for public release.

Join us in capturing, describing, uploading, and preserving at-risk federal data to contribute to the Data Rescue Project.

Millions of children in Africa are unable to acquire age-appropriate skills in reading and mathematics especially in their early years.

For one week, a diverse group representing 13 African countries gathered to strengthen their skills in managing and analysing foundational learning data and build lasting connections with peers pursuing similar goals.

Asenze Study and the African Cigarette Prices 2016-2024 datasets are available on our Data Portal

View the latest dataset available from our open data portal: the Rural Urban Dynamics Project produced by LURA, and the Green Occupations Crosswalk Data produced by SALDRU.

In many African contexts, classroom-based or large-scale standardized assessments often fall short. One-on-one (1:1) assessments offer an alternative.

The University of Cape Town's, ZivaHub has been awarded the CoreTrustSeal Certification. DataFirst was a forerunner in achieving the certification, becoming the first African data repository to receive the CoreTrustSeal in 2018.

Data for all years of the Department of Basic Education’s Early Grade Reading Study are now available from our data site. Some key findings are that teacher coaching is effective, and the language used in learning is important.

The second one-week residential course will be held at the University of Cape Town from 9 to 13 June 2025. This five-day course aims to improve your skills in data cleaning, data analysis, data interpretation and the communication of resear

We invite applications for a postdoctoral position to work in the AFLEARN Data Hub. The successful candidate will be involved in original empirical research; collating and analysing large-scale African foundational learning data; publishing

In partnership with DataFirst, the WORLD Policy Analysis Center is thrilled to announce the release of open access longitudinal quantitative measures of laws and policies for African countries that lay the foundation for equal opportunities

AFLEARN’s inaugural one-week residential course took place from 4 to 8 November 2024, focusing on maximising the impact of foundational learning data.

Lynn Woolfrey, Manager of Data Services and Operations at DataFirst, was a Speaker at the Make Data Count Summit 2024 on the 5th and 6th of September.

In March 2024 Professor Cally Ardington took over the Directorship of DataFirst, succeeding Professor Martin Wittenberg, who led DataFirst with distinction for 13 years.