Leveraging data in African countries: Curating government microdata for research

Governments mandate their National Statistics Offices to collect empirical data through censuses and surveys to determine appropriate national policies. Further investigation of this data by academics can help evaluate the effectiveness of government action. In many countries governments have created policies and institutions to share official data with researchers to allow independent evaluation of both the data and the policies informed by the data. In 2009 a survey was undertaken to assess ease of access to government survey microdata in African countries. This investigation revealed that the sharing of African government microdata is constrained by several obstacles. African National Statistics Offices, the main African data producers, have limited resources to curate microdata and ensure its long-term availability. Consequently many African data producers do not follow international best practice with regard to survey data management or make the microdata from official surveys available for research purposes. A further obstacle in Africa is inadequate producer-user communication channels. Concerns around the confidentiality of respondent information also present a barrier to data usage for research, as does the bureaucratic nature of government institutions involved in data production. A follow-up survey undertaken in 2012 examined improvements in data access and other dimensions of data quality in the intervening years, focusing on Statistics Offices participating in a donor project to advance data curation in resource poor countries. The survey showed that the provision of appropriate data curation tools can improve data sharing for policy feedback. However, this is more effective in countries with sound data usage policies driven by African decision-makers who appreciate the role of data utilisation in national development.