The data stack, stated plainly
No single source covers African infrastructure. This is the full set behind the platform — what each one is good for, and where it breaks.
Private Participation in Infrastructure (PPI) Database
Project-level, 25+ years, financial-close only. The single best machine-readable source available. Sub-Saharan records are sparse — that sparsity is itself a finding.
Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa
Commitments by funder, sector, region and country. Current edition 2021–2023, published 2025. Extract the tables once and be explicit about the lag.
Creditor Reporting System (CRS)
Activity-level ODA and OOF with sector codes for transport, energy, water and communications. Underused and genuinely queryable.
African Infrastructure Database (AID)
1,800+ projects across 55 countries, tracked against PIDA stages S0–S4C. The only free continental register; depends on member-state self-reporting.
Projects Portal
Approvals, disbursements and status by country and sector for the largest multilateral lender on the continent.
Projects & Operations
Live feed behind the INFRA/CORE project register: every African infrastructure operation (energy, transport, water, digital, urban, minerals) is ingested from this API with commitments, dates, borrowers, financiers and E&S risk ratings, then scored for bankability.
Disclosure Portal
Summaries of proposed private-sector investments published ahead of board approval — an early-warning signal 60–90 days before close.
Global Energy Monitor trackers
Unit-level trackers for coal, gas, oil, solar, wind, hydro, LNG and transmission. Best asset-level power dataset for Africa by a wide margin.
Africa Infrastructure Development Index (AIDI)
Composite country scores across electricity, transport, ICT and WSS back to 2000. Measures what exists, not what is spent.
Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE)
The best structured proxy for 'is this market investable' in power.
Ibrahim Index of African Governance
Open data, strong methodology, with infrastructure and rule-of-law subcomponents.
World Energy Investment / Africa Energy Outlook
Africa's share of global energy investment sits around 3%. The annual Africa chapter is the reference framing.
Renewable Capacity Statistics
Country-level installed renewable capacity, updated annually and cleanly machine-readable.
Power pool statistics (SAPP, WAPP, EAPP, CAPP, COMELEC)
Trading volumes, interconnector status and master plans. The single most underused data in African power.
Corridor authority transit data
Transit times and volumes published monthly. Excellent, and almost never used.
DataHub
ICT indicators, broadband penetration and international bandwidth.
Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP)
The authoritative water and sanitation access dataset.
Mineral Commodity Summaries
Free, annual, country-level production for every tracked commodity.
State of Africa's Infrastructure Report
Best single institutional analysis. The 2026 edition argues the constraint has shifted from capital to intermediation.
African Economic Outlook
Country-by-country macro plus an annual infrastructure or financing theme.
Regional Economic Outlook: Sub-Saharan Africa
April and October; the debt-sustainability framing everything else sits inside.
Chinese Loans to Africa Database
Loan-level, 2000–2024, downloadable. The gold standard.
Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset
Broader methodology than the BU set; captures more off-balance-sheet lending. Use both — they disagree, and the disagreement is informative.
National PPP units
The primary source for pipelines and rules in each jurisdiction.
African Legal Support Facility
Contract negotiation guidance, model agreements and sovereign debt legal analysis. Excellent and almost entirely overlooked.
Sector regulator tariff orders
Tariff orders and licence registers are the most decision-relevant documents in the stack, and nobody aggregates them.
AfDB, AFC, Africa50, Afreximbank, TDB, DBSA, BOAD, EBID
Deal announcements, annual reports and strategy documents. Collectively the primary record of what is actually being financed.
BII, Proparco, DEG, KfW, FMO, Norfund, EIB Global, EBRD
Set up feeds for all of them; disclosure quality is high and timely.
PIDG, EAAIF, GuarantCo, InfraCredit, MIGA, GCF, AGIA, SEFA
The layer that decides bankability. Track guarantee issuance, not just loan volume.
IATI Datastore
Near-real-time activity publishing by donors and DFIs. Coverage varies by publisher but it is the fastest-updating official source.
Virtual PIDA Information Centre
Validated PIDA Priority Action Plan projects. Use for the cross-border corridor subset.
Africa Infrastructure Knowledge Program (AIKP)
The underlying indicator collection behind AIDI. Deeper series than the index itself.
Logistics Performance Index
Customs, infrastructure, tracking and timeliness. Biennial.
Business Ready (B-READY)
Successor to Doing Business; includes utility connection and regulatory quality indicators.
Review of Maritime Transport / LSCI
Liner shipping connectivity and maritime throughput.
Container Port Performance Index
Berth productivity rankings; contested methodology but the only comparable series.
Mobile Economy Africa
Free annual summary; full dataset behind subscription.
Submarine Cable Map
Map is free; underlying data is licensed.
EITI country reports
Contract and revenue disclosure by implementing country.
Africa's Pulse
Twice yearly macro and fiscal context.
Foresight Africa
January, free, consistently strong.
Africa's Development Dynamics
Joint continental-OECD analysis.
Global SWF transaction database
The closest available proxy for Gulf sovereign capital. No true equivalent of the BU database exists — a genuine gap.
China-Global South Project
Daily analysis; the best English-language read on Chinese engagement.
InfraCompass / Project Pipeline
Comparative enabling-environment scoring and a global pipeline view.
AfCFTA Secretariat
Trade protocols that drive corridor demand.
DFC, US EXIM, JICA/JBIC, Korea Eximbank, CDB/China Exim, NDB
Disclosure varies sharply; DFC and JICA are the most transparent.
IsDB, BADEA, Kuwait Fund, ADFD, Saudi Fund, OPEC Fund
Annual reports only; no activity-level machine-readable disclosure.
- Programmatic endpoint available
- CSV / Excel / JSON download
- Document only — needs extraction
- Feed available
- Subscription or licence required
- Web only, no structured export