| Overview : The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015 stand to generate unprecedented both in quantity and quality of data and statistics. The "leaving no one behind" principle and increased importance of monitoring sustainable development particularly imply that the world needs more data with better quality. It is with this backdrop that the Secretary General's High Level Panel (HLP) on Post-2015 Development Agenda called for actions to "improve quality of statistics and information available to people and government" in “A New Global Partnership”. In “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, world leaders pledged to intensify efforts to strengthen statistical capacity in developing countries. This global call for a Data Revolution has been echoed around the world since the publication of HLP report and much discussion has been done around how to implement it. In Africa, the High Level Conference (HLC) on Data Revolution was held in Addis Ababa in March 2015, in response to a request by African Heads of States. During the HLC, a set of principles to implement Data Revolution in Africa was developed which includes i) countries must own the prioritization, financing and leadership of this revolution; ii) all data communities should embrace the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics as a starting point; iii) data should be open by default; and iv) technology, new forms of data and other innovations should be actively embraced. Given the indispensable role of data in achieving SDGs, it is important to assess the current Data Ecosystem and the new data demand, track the progress of the unfolding data revolution in Africa and inform policy makers about what is needed to fully realize the Revolution. Therefore, a mechanism needs to be devised to monitor the changing data situation on the continent and hence it was proposed to publish a biannual "Africa Data Report" (ADR) to assess the strength of data ecosystems. The Report will feed into other SDG initiatives and studies by providing a concrete analysis of data issues in the continent. UNDP, ECA, World Wide Web Foundation and the International Development Research Centre will be producing a report on data revolution. The first issue of the report was envisioned to review the data ecosystem in the continent, which will be based on in-depth assessments in 14 selected countries, one of which is South Africa. | 
