LEAD — Leaders' Visits & Agreements Database (1990–2025)

A structured, human-coded dataset of high-level diplomatic engagements — state visits, phone calls, video conferences and the bilateral agreements they produced — involving the heads of state, heads of government and foreign ministers of African countries between 1990 and 2025. Release 1.6 covers the two systematically coded regions, Eastern and Western Africa: 34 country datasets (the nineteen-state Eastern-Africa module, Somaliland included, and the full fifteen-member ECOWAS belt) and 14,848 entries, each with dates, host city, counterpart, discussion topics, agreement categories, strategic importance and an evidential confidence rating. Every record was cross-validated against the independent Country and Organization Leader Travel (COLT) dataset of the Frederick S. Pardee Institute for International Futures (University of Denver). Assembled from open sources by the Africa Foundation under a standardised 59-variable codebook (v5.2), included in machine-readable form and as a PDF; the codebook file omits coder identities. Release 1.6 standardises leader names: eight leaders recorded under two spellings now carry one canonical spelling each (29 cells; listed in leader_aliases.json), so the data counts 578 distinct leaders; no other values change. The deposit now also carries the full data as CSV and Excel files. Interactive map, country profiles, full methodology and — for registered users — leader profiles: https://lead-database.netlify.app