Heads of State, Colonial Administrations and Precolonial Polities of Africa's 54 Countries, 1800 to Present

For each of Africa's 54 UN-recognized states, this dataset records who held power, or what kind of authority governed the territory, from 1800 to the present, with no year left empty. It is the data behind the interactive map at provenanceafrica.com/history/leaders-map/. 732 entries in three layers: precolonial polities and situations (181, classed as dominant polity, fragmented, decentralized, contested frontier or settler republic), colonial administrations including First World War occupations and League of Nations mandates (73), and heads of state or holders of effective executive power from independence to today, with transitional arrangements such as federations, autonomous regions and periods without central government (478). Each entry has a stable id, country, name, title, start and end years, dates as precise as the sources allow, a short description of how the tenure began and ended, and its layer. Entries were checked against at least one independent reference per date; where sources disagree, the disagreement is kept. A pre-publication audit in September 2026 closed every year without an entry and verified every entry still marked unverified. The short prose notes shown on the map are not part of this version. See README.md for fields, method and limitations.