electricsheepafrica/africa-humanitarian-needs-all

Freedom of Speech (2005 - 2021)

Publisher: Bertelsmann Stiftung · Source: OpenAfrica · License: cc-by · Updated: 2023-01-26

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Abstract

The variable Freeexpr_bti indicates the extent to which individuals, groups, and the press can express their views free from government interference. Score 1 Freedom of expression is denied. Independent media do not exist or are prohibited. 4 Freedom of expression is often subject to interference or government restrictions. Distortion and manipulation shape matters of public debate. 7 Freedom of expression is occasionally subject to interference or government restrictions, but there are generally no incidents of blatant intrusions like outright state censorship or media shutdowns. 10 Freedom of expression is guaranteed against interference or government restrictions. Individuals, groups and the press can fully exercise these rights. The remaining scores are intermediate categories.

Each row in this dataset represents tabular records. Data was last updated on OpenAfrica on 2023-01-26. Geographic scope: BENIN, BOTSWANA, ETHIOPIA, KENYA, NIGERIA, SENEGAL, SOUTH-AFRICA, SUDAN, and 3 others.

Curated into ML-ready Parquet format by Electric Sheep Africa.

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Dataset Characteristics

Domain	Humanitarian and development data
Unit of observation	Tabular records
Rows (total)	93
Columns	5 (2 numeric, 3 categorical, 0 datetime)
Train split	74 rows
Test split	18 rows
Geographic scope	BENIN, BOTSWANA, ETHIOPIA, KENYA, NIGERIA, SENEGAL, SOUTH-AFRICA, SUDAN, and 3 others
Publisher	Bertelsmann Stiftung
OpenAfrica last updated	2023-01-26

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Variables

Identifier / Metadata — unnamed_1 (range 2005.0–2021.0), unnamed_2 (range 2.0–10.0), esa_source (HDX), esa_processed (2026-04-28).

Other — freedom_of_speech_2005_2021 (Benin, Botswana, Ethiopia).

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Quick Start

from datasets import load_dataset

ds    = load_dataset("electricsheepafrica/africa-humanitarian-needs-all")
train = ds["train"].to_pandas()
test  = ds["test"].to_pandas()

print(train.shape)
train.head()

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Schema

Column	Type	Null %	Range / Sample Values
freedom_of_speech_2005_2021	object	1.1%	Benin, Botswana, Ethiopia
unnamed_1	float64	3.2%	2005.0 – 2021.0 (mean 2013.0)
unnamed_2	float64	3.2%	2.0 – 10.0 (mean 6.1778)
esa_source	object	0.0%	HDX
esa_processed	object	0.0%	2026-04-28

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Numeric Summary

Column	Min	Max	Mean	Median
unnamed_1	2005.0	2021.0	2013.0	2013.0
unnamed_2	2.0	10.0	6.1778	7.0

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Curation

Raw data was downloaded from OpenAfrica via the CKAN API and converted to Parquet. Column names were lowercased and standardised to snake_case. Common missing-value markers (N/A, null, none, -, unknown, no data, #N/A) were unified to NaN. 5 column(s) with >80% missing values were removed: unnamed_3, unnamed_4, unnamed_5, unnamed_6, unnamed_7. 2 column(s) were cast from string to numeric or datetime based on parse-success rate (>85% threshold). The dataset was split 80/20 into train and test partitions using a fixed random seed (42) and saved as Snappy-compressed Parquet.

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Limitations

• Data originates from Bertelsmann Stiftung and has not been independently validated by ESA.
• Automated cleaning cannot correct for misreported values, definitional inconsistencies, or sampling bias in the original collection.
• This dataset spans 11 countries; geographic and methodological inconsistencies across national boundaries may affect cross-country comparability.
• Refer to the original HDX dataset page for the publisher's own methodology notes and caveats.

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Citation

@dataset{openafrica_africa_humanitarian_needs_all,
  title     = {Freedom of Speech (2005 - 2021)},
  author    = {Bertelsmann Stiftung},
  year      = {2023},
  url       = {https://open.africa/dataset/freedom-of-speech-2005-2021},
  note      = {Repackaged for machine learning by Electric Sheep Africa (https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica)}
}

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Electric Sheep Africa — Africa's ML dataset infrastructure. Lagos, Nigeria.