Useful sources about Africa

The World Bank’s jobs dashboard for sub-Saharan Africa provides information on employment, labour market institutions and ease of doing business.

The International Monetary Fund’s October 2017 regional economic outlook report gives an overview of Africa’s economic recovery, referencing indicators such as debt and growth.

The International Monetary Fund’s official data portal is a comprehensive economic databank providing a range of time series data on IMF lending, exchange rates and other economic and financial indicators, in Africa and the world. Country data can be sorted alphabetically and includes GDP, inflation rates, population figures, consumer prices and more.

The International Monetary Fund’s direction of trade statistics provides the value of exports and imports disaggregated by countries’ primary trading partners. It covers both IMF member states and non-member states. The most recent data is for 1 March 2017.

The World Bank's TCdata360 initiative aggregates trade and competitiveness indicators from 25 sources in and outside the bank. It visualises the data and allows users to compare by country over time, download raw data and view data in maps, charts and reports.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics database provides cross-nation comparable data on education. This includes data on adult and child literacy in Africa.

The interactive UNESCO eAtlas for literacy maps literacy levels across the world. It allows the user to customise maps, charts and ranking tables for indicators covering youth, adult and elderly populations. Indicators are disaggregated by sex to better evaluate gender inequalities.

This World Bank database uses UNESCO data to provide details of school enrolment by country. It has a databank tool for online visualisation and allows users to download raw data.

The World Bank’s education database provides data on indicators such as government spending on education in each African country.