---
license: cc-by-4.0
language:
- en
tags:
- africa
- unicef
- children
- social-protection
- tabular
pretty_name: "Social Protection — Africa (UNICEF)"
---

# Social Protection — Africa

**Source:** [UNICEF Data Warehouse](https://data.unicef.org/)
**Theme:** `SPP` (social-protection)
**Publisher:** United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
**Coverage:** 54 African countries · 2008–2024 · 345 rows
**Indicators:** 7

## About

The UNICEF Data Warehouse consolidates child-focused indicators across UNICEF
collaborators (WHO, World Bank, JMP, UIS, MICS-derived aggregates, etc.).
This dataset contains the **social-protection** theme filtered to all 54 African
countries (ISO3-coded), repackaged in ML-ready Parquet by
[Electric Sheep Africa](https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica).

## Schema

| Column | Type |
|--------|------|
| `REF_AREA` | string |
| `Geographic area` | string |
| `INDICATOR` | string |
| `Indicator` | string |
| `SEX` | string |
| `Sex` | string |
| `TIME_PERIOD` | int64 |
| `OBS_VALUE` | float64 |
| `UNIT_MEASURE` | string |
| `Unit of measure` | string |
| `SERIES_FOOTNOTE` | string |
| `DATA_SOURCE` | string |
| `AGE` | string |
| `Current age` | string |

### Key columns

- **`REF_AREA`** — ISO3 country code
- **`INDICATOR`** — UNICEF indicator code (see `data.unicef.org` for definitions)
- **`TIME_PERIOD`** — year of observation
- **`OBS_VALUE`** — indicator value
- **`SEX`**, **`AGE`**, **`RESIDENCE`**, **`WEALTH_QUINTILE`** — disaggregation dimensions where available
- **`DATA_SOURCE`** — survey / administrative source

## Usage

```python
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("electricsheepafrica/africa-unicef-social-protection")
df = ds["train"].to_pandas()
```

## License

[CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — UNICEF open data
with attribution. Always cite UNICEF + the `DATA_SOURCE`/`CUSTODIAN`/`SOURCE_LINK`
columns embedded in each row for the original survey provider.