Free GIS data downloads for
South Africa & beyond.

Municipal Demarcation Board — Official Admin Boundaries

Municipal Demarcation Board (wards, municipalities, provinces)

Stats SA Census 2011 — National Boundary Layers

Statistics South Africa (EA, Small Areas, Subplaces, Main Places, Wards)

HDX — COD Administrative Boundaries (Levels 0–4)

OCHA HDX (compiled from official sources)

geoBoundaries — Open Administrative Boundaries

William & Mary geoLab — openly licensed global administrative boundaries with API access

Useful for consistent cross-country boundary datasets.

City of Cape Town — Zoning (Open Data)

City of Cape Town (zoning layers & viewer)

City of Johannesburg — Online Maps (incl. Zoning)

City of Johannesburg CGIS (viewer; some downloads by request)

Wazimap SA — Census & Elections

OpenUp / Wazimap — South African census and contextual data explorer

Stats SA — Census 2022 Data Portal

Statistics South Africa — Census 2022 datasets, geography, households and persons

Official unit-record and metadata access; check geography files and terms for your use case.

WorldPop — South Africa Population Grids

WorldPop — gridded population estimates for South Africa, including 100 m products

Useful for accessibility, service planning, market analysis and population exposure studies.

SANBI BGIS — Biodiversity GIS Portal

SANBI (Vegetation Map, Threatened Ecosystems, wetlands, more)

Protected & Conservation Areas — SAPAD / SACAD

DFFE EGIS (official protected & conservation area boundaries)

GBIF — Species Occurrence Records (ZA)

GBIF / SANBI (filter country=South Africa)

Freshwater Priority Areas (NFEPA) & National Wetland Map

SANBI / Partners (NFEPA rivers & wetlands, National Wetland Map 5)

South African National Land Cover (SANLC 2022)

SANSA / SAEOSS (national land‑cover classes)

DFFE EGIS — Environmental GIS & Screening Tool

Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment

DWS — Rivers, Catchments & Monitoring Points

Department of Water & Sanitation (GI&A / IWQS)

HydroSHEDS — Global Hydrology & Catchment Data

HydroSHEDS — DEM-derived flow, catchment, river and lake products with Africa downloads

Includes continental Africa downloads for several core layers.

CD:NGI — National Mapping, Aerials & Elevation

Chief Directorate: National Geo‑spatial Information

SANSA — Earth Observation (SAEOSS)

SANSA (imagery & EO datasets)

Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem — Sentinel Data

European Union / ESA — Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, Sentinel-5P and Copernicus services

Strong option for free satellite imagery and programmatic Earth observation workflows.

Council for Geoscience — Geology Data

Council for Geoscience (maps & datasets)

ARC — Land Type & Soils

Agricultural Research Council (ISCW)

SoilGrids — Global Soil Property Maps

ISRIC — global 250 m soil-property maps with WMS/WCS/WebDAV access

The REST API may be intermittent; WMS/WCS/WebDAV are documented alternatives.

OpenStreetMap Extract — South Africa & Lesotho

Geofabrik (roads, buildings, landuse, more)

South Africa GeoPortal — Ready‑to‑use Layers

Esri South Africa (roads, schools, dams, rivers, land cover)

Chief Surveyor‑General — Cadastral Spatial Data

CSG (parcels, servitudes, townships; per‑province downloads)

Master Health Facility List (South Africa)

National/CSIR (directory of health facilities)

HOT OSM — Health Facilities (ZA)

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (export)

Eskom — Transmission Lines & Substations

Eskom / NTC (transmission network datasets)

Google Open Buildings — Building Footprints

Google Research — building polygons and points across Africa and the Global South

Large dataset; country/region extraction guidance is available from the provider.

USGS Earth Explorer

Landsat optical, declassified (CORONA), hyperspectral (Hyperion)

Sentinel / Copernicus Browser

Sentinel-2 (optical), Sentinel-1 (SAR)

NASA Earthdata Search

Earth science products: land, atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere

NOAA Data Access Viewer

Satellite & aerial imagery, coastal LiDAR

Maxar Open Data Program

High-res optical for disasters; samples & derived data

Airbus OneAtlas — Pléiades, SPOT, Radar & WorldDEM

Airbus Space Solutions — premium optical, radar, basemap and elevation products

Premium imagery; sample/trial access may be available.

NASA Worldview

Scientific satellite product layers (hazards, climate, atmospheric)

NOAA CLASS

GOES/POES imagery and environmental products

Bhuvan (ISRO)

IRS, Cartosat, ResourceSat, OceanSat; NDVI and CartoDEM

JAXA Global ALOS 3D World

Global DSM (≈30 m) via ALOS L-band radar

NOAA Digital Coast

Imagery, elevation, land cover & coastal datasets

PROBA-V MEP (GeoViewer)

PROBA-V, SPOT-Vegetation, METOP – global vegetation patterns

Satellite Land Cover (GLCF etc.)

Global land cover / land use maps (various sources)

Historic source; verify current availability before relying on it.

UNAVCO (SAR Archive / Geodesy)

SAR data, geodesy & tectonic datasets

Legacy geodesy/SAR source; some services may now be provided through successor organisations.

INPE (Brazil)

CBERS, ResourceSat, UK-DMC imagery (catalog)

Esri Land Cover 10m

Global 10 m land cover

Global Land Survey (GLS)

Global land cover composites (Landsat-based)

ESA WorldCover

Global land cover @ ≈10 m (Sentinel-1/2)

OSM Land Use Data

OpenStreetMap derived land use polygons

USGS – Global Land Cover Characterization (GLCC)

Global land cover datasets (historic)

UN FAO – GLC-SHARE

Global Land Cover Network

TerraPop

Integrated population & environment data

Natural Earth — Global Vector & Raster Map Data

Natural Earth / NACIS — cultural, physical and raster datasets at multiple scales

Excellent for reference mapping, cartography and small-to-medium-scale global maps.

Google Open Buildings 2.5D Temporal

Google Research — annual building presence, height and count rasters for 2016–2023

Includes South Africa within the covered Global South regions.

Copernicus Data Space — Sentinel & Copernicus Collections

Copernicus — free Earth observation archive, browser, APIs and processing services

Includes discovery, visualization, download and programmatic access.

geoBoundaries — Global Administrative Boundaries

geoBoundaries — country-level administrative boundaries with API and archival access

Use gbOpen for CC BY 4.0-compatible boundary data.

AfriGIS — South Africa & Africa Location Data

AfriGIS — verified addresses, sublocalities, population, points of interest, WMS/WFS and API products

Strong South African option for business-ready location intelligence and address data.

Planet — PlanetScope, SkySat & Monitoring

Planet — commercial daily monitoring, high-resolution tasking, archive imagery and APIs

Self-service and enterprise access options vary by freshness, tasking and volume.

Maxar Geospatial Platform — Premium Imagery & 3D

Maxar — high-resolution satellite imagery, basemaps, 3D and analytics

Browse/buy imagery through Maxar products; free product samples are also available.

Airbus OneAtlas — Premium Optical, Radar & Elevation

Airbus Space Solutions — Pléiades Neo, SPOT, radar archives, WorldDEM and basemaps

OneAtlas provides archive/tasking access; a limited optical imagery trial is advertised by Airbus.

TomTom Orbis Maps — Business Map & Location Data

TomTom — continuously updated map database with roads, addresses, restrictions, POI and traffic-related content

Designed for application, fleet, mobility and enterprise mapping workflows.

RSA Geological Form

GeoLayers Marketplace — cartographic geological product for South Africa

Open the product page for licensing and purchase details.

Eco-Regions of Africa

GeoLayers Marketplace — mapped overview of African ecological regions

Open the product page for licensing and purchase details.