Government

Query African government overviews, current leaders, historical terms, cabinet records, and related country government data.

Government History In Africa API

Government history is a separate domain from governance indicators.

Use this surface for:

current heads of state and government
historical leadership terms
leader detail pages across countries
country-level government overviews
recent elections embedded into those country overviews
recent policy and law records plus policy-event summaries embedded into those country overviews

Current sources:

wikidata_government_history
wikidata_current_governments

Use:

GET /v1/government/overview/{country_code}
GET /v1/government/leaders
GET /v1/government/leaders/{leader_wikidata_id}
GET /v1/government/terms
GET /v1/government/cabinet/{country_code}
GET /v1/government/cabinet-members

Related elections routes now live under:

GET /v1/elections
GET /v1/elections/country/{country_code}
GET /v1/elections/{election_wikidata_id}
GET /v1/elections/results/{election_wikidata_id}

Scope Note

Governance covers annual institutional indicators like rule of law or corruption control.
Government covers leaders, terms of office, and current cabinet composition.
Elections covers election events and candidate-level results.

These are intentionally separate because leadership history is not a country-year scalar observation.

Country Overview Example

curl "https://api.africa-api.com/v1/government/overview/ke" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AFRICA_API_KEY"

Example response shape:

{
  "data": {
    "country": {
      "code": "ke",
      "name": "Kenya",
      "region": "East Africa"
    },
    "current_head_of_state": {
      "leader_wikidata_id": "Q2",
      "leader_name": "William Ruto",
      "office_name": "President of Kenya",
      "role_type": "head_of_state",
      "start_date": "2022-09-13",
      "source": "wikidata_government_history"
    },
    "current_head_of_government": {
      "leader_wikidata_id": "Q2",
      "leader_name": "William Ruto",
      "office_name": "President of Kenya",
      "role_type": "head_of_government",
      "start_date": "2022-09-13",
      "source": "wikidata_government_history"
    },
    "cabinet_member_count": 3,
    "current_cabinet_members": [
      {
        "statement_id": "Q1-ABC",
        "leader_wikidata_id": "Q1234",
        "leader_name": "John Mbadi",
        "country_code": "ke",
        "country_name": "Kenya",
        "office_name": "Cabinet Secretary for National Treasury",
        "role_category": "minister",
        "party_name": "ODM",
        "start_date": "2024-08-08",
        "is_current": true,
        "source": "wikidata_current_governments",
        "source_url": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1234"
      }
    ],
    "recent_terms": [],
    "recent_elections": []
  }
}

Leader Search Example

curl "https://api.africa-api.com/v1/government/leaders?q=ruto&current_only=true&limit=20" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AFRICA_API_KEY"

Historical Terms Example

curl "https://api.africa-api.com/v1/government/terms?country_code=ng&role_type=head_of_government&start_date_from=2000-01-01&limit=20" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AFRICA_API_KEY"

Current Cabinet Example

curl "https://api.africa-api.com/v1/government/cabinet-members?country_code=ke&current_only=true&limit=25" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AFRICA_API_KEY"

How It Fits The Rest Of The API

country profiles embed the current head of state and head of government when available
country profiles embed a compact list of current cabinet members when available
country profiles embed the latest election when available
governance indicators remain queryable through /v1/data
this domain now complements the live elections domain and policy-document timeline domain for deeper state-capacity and legal-history work