electricsheepafrica/africa-unhcr-population-data-for-caf

---
annotations_creators:
- no-annotation
language_creators:
- found
language:
- en
license: cc-by-4.0
multilinguality:
- monolingual
size_categories:
- 1K<n<10K
source_datasets:
- original
task_categories:
- tabular-classification
- tabular-regression
task_ids: []
tags:
- africa
- humanitarian
- hdx
- electric-sheep-africa
- asylum-seekers
- internally-displaced-persons-idp
- population
- refugees
- stateless-persons
- caf
pretty_name: "Central African Republic - Data on forcibly displaced populations and stateless persons"
dataset_info:
splits:
- name: train
num_examples: 881
- name: test
num_examples: 220
---

# Central African Republic - Data on forcibly displaced populations and stateless persons

**Publisher:** UNHCR - The UN Refugee Agency · **Source:** [HDX](https://data.humdata.org/dataset/unhcr-population-data-for-caf) · **License:** `cc-by-igo` · **Updated:** 2026-02-25

---

## Abstract

Data collated by UNHCR, containing information about forcibly displaced populations and stateless persons, spanning across more than 70 years of statistical activities. The data includes the countries / territories of asylum and origin. Specific resources are available for end-year population totals, demographics, asylum applications, decisions, and solutions availed by refugees and IDPs (resettlement, naturalisation or returns).

Each row in this dataset represents first-level administrative unit observations. Data was last updated on HDX on 2026-02-25. Geographic scope: **CAF**.

*Curated into ML-ready Parquet format by [Electric Sheep Africa](https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica).*

---

## Dataset Characteristics

| | |
|---|---|
| **Domain** | Demographics and population |
| **Unit of observation** | First-level administrative unit observations |
| **Rows (total)** | 1,102 |
| **Columns** | 14 (8 numeric, 6 categorical, 0 datetime) |
| **Train split** | 881 rows |
| **Test split** | 220 rows |
| **Geographic scope** | CAF |
| **Publisher** | UNHCR - The UN Refugee Agency |
| **HDX last updated** | 2026-02-25 |

---

## Variables

**Geographic** — `year` (range 1982.0–2025.0), `country_of_origin_code` (CAF), `country_of_asylum_code` (COG, CAN, FRA), `country_of_origin_name` (Central African Republic), `country_of_asylum_name` (Congo, Canada, France) and 4 others.

**Identifier / Metadata** — `refugees` (range 0.0–353956.0), `esa_source` (HDX), `esa_processed` (2026-04-04).

**Other** — `other_people_in_need_of_international_protection` (range 0.0–0.0), `others_of_concern_to_unhcr` (range 0.0–20000.0).

---

## Quick Start

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("electricsheepafrica/africa-unhcr-population-data-for-caf")
train = ds["train"].to_pandas()
test = ds["test"].to_pandas()

print(train.shape)
train.head()
```

---

## Schema

| Column | Type | Null % | Range / Sample Values |
|---|---|---|---|
| `year` | int64 | 0.0% | 1982.0 – 2025.0 (mean 2014.2359) |
| `country_of_origin_code` | object | 0.0% | CAF |
| `country_of_asylum_code` | object | 0.0% | COG, CAN, FRA |
| `country_of_origin_name` | object | 0.0% | Central African Republic |
| `country_of_asylum_name` | object | 0.0% | Congo, Canada, France |
| `refugees` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 353956.0 (mean 7954.4428) |
| `asylum_seekers` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 9404.0 (mean 180.1416) |
| `other_people_in_need_of_international_protection` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 0.0 (mean 0.0) |
| `internally_displaced_persons` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 894421.0 (mean 7591.4211) |
| `stateless_persons` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 0.0 (mean 0.0) |
| `others_of_concern_to_unhcr` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 20000.0 (mean 104.8194) |
| `host_community` | int64 | 0.0% | 0.0 – 0.0 (mean 0.0) |
| `esa_source` | object | 0.0% | HDX |
| `esa_processed` | object | 0.0% | 2026-04-04 |

---

## Numeric Summary

| Column | Min | Max | Mean | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `year` | 1982.0 | 2025.0 | 2014.2359 | 2016.0 |
| `refugees` | 0.0 | 353956.0 | 7954.4428 | 12.5 |
| `asylum_seekers` | 0.0 | 9404.0 | 180.1416 | 6.0 |
| `other_people_in_need_of_international_protection` | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| `internally_displaced_persons` | 0.0 | 894421.0 | 7591.4211 | 0.0 |
| `stateless_persons` | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| `others_of_concern_to_unhcr` | 0.0 | 20000.0 | 104.8194 | 0.0 |
| `host_community` | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |

---

## Curation

Raw data was downloaded from HDX 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`. The dataset was split 80/20 into train and test partitions using a fixed random seed (42) and saved as Snappy-compressed Parquet.

---

## Limitations

- Data originates from UNHCR - The UN Refugee Agency and has not been independently validated by ESA.
- Automated cleaning cannot correct for misreported values, definitional inconsistencies, or sampling bias in the original collection.
- Refer to the [original HDX dataset page](https://data.humdata.org/dataset/unhcr-population-data-for-caf) for the publisher's own methodology notes and caveats.

---

## Citation

```bibtex
@dataset{hdx_africa_unhcr_population_data_for_caf,
title = {Central African Republic - Data on forcibly displaced populations and stateless persons},
author = {UNHCR - The UN Refugee Agency},
year = {2026},
url = {https://data.humdata.org/dataset/unhcr-population-data-for-caf},
note = {Repackaged for machine learning by Electric Sheep Africa (https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica)}
}
```

---

*[Electric Sheep Africa](https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica) — Africa's ML dataset infrastructure. Lagos, Nigeria.*