Open Data Portals in Africa: An Analysis of Open Government Data Initiatives

Abstract

African countries like other developed nations are beginning to open up data towards attaining transparency and accountability. A better understanding by citizens of what a government does and the level of performance achieved can be better understood by making public sector data open. Citizens can therefore hold their government accountable for not meeting up with stated goals and misconducts. This study employs a survey through content analysis to evaluate the extent of implementation of open data portals. Variables used for the evaluation are Berners Lee 5 star of open data, implementation technology, data formats, licensing, major data sets and functionality across the African continent. A total of twenty two data portals from seventeen different countries were assessed. Seven of the data portals representing 32% of the total number of the data portals were implemented using Drupal tool (Dkan). About 60% of the portals under investigation are national initiatives, and Nigeria has the only regional/state initiative and the only two independent organisation data portals. The only two university related-initiatives as well as the only city-based data portal were from South Africa, while a specialised data portal dedicated to the Ebola crisis was captured from Sierra Leone. The dates for the creation of the data portals span from 2011 to the current year (2015). The result indicates that an appreciable effort is being made in the creation of data portals; however, more countries need to take the giant stride to data provisioning in the open formats. More data sets also need to be populated onto the portals. Movement towards attaining the 5- star status of open data portals is in progress but a lot needs to be done towards attaining this. There is also a need to complement the efforts of national governments, and this could be done by regional/state, cities, universities, and independent organisations.

Keywords: Data Portal, Open Data, Visual Data, Data Formats, 5 Star of Open Data