University of Cape Town

---
aid: university-of-cape-town
name: University of Cape Town
description: >-
  The University of Cape Town (UCT) is South Africa's leading public research
  university, ranked #96 in the QS World University Rankings 2025 and the
  highest-ranked university on the African continent. UCT does not operate a
  single consolidated developer portal, but several of its research and library
  units expose public, machine-readable interfaces. DataFirst runs a NADA-based
  microdata catalog with a public REST API, the OpenUCT institutional repository
  exposes a DSpace OAI-PMH metadata harvesting endpoint, and the ZivaHub open
  data repository is built on Figshare for Institutions and is reachable through
  the public Figshare API. Most operational, student-information, and identity
  systems remain gated behind institutional authentication.
type: Index
position: Consumer
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/university-of-cape-town/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
  - Education
  - Higher Education
  - University
  - Research Data
  - Open Data
  - Institutional Repository
  - OAI-PMH
  - South Africa
  - Africa
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-06-03'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
  - aid: university-of-cape-town:datafirst-nada
    name: DataFirst Microdata Catalog API (NADA)
    description: >-
      DataFirst is a UCT research unit and data service providing online access
      to survey and administrative microdata from South Africa and other African
      countries. Its open data portal is built on the NADA (National Data
      Archive) cataloging tool, which exposes a public REST/JSON API for
      browsing the catalog of studies. The catalog endpoint returns survey
      metadata (hundreds of confirmed surveys) in JSON.
    humanURL: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog
    baseURL: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/api
    tags: [ Microdata, Open Data, Research Data, NADA, Catalog, Surveys ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog
      - type: Website
        url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/
  - aid: university-of-cape-town:openuct-oai-pmh
    name: OpenUCT Institutional Repository OAI-PMH
    description: >-
      OpenUCT is the University of Cape Town's open access institutional
      repository, launched in 2014 and built on DSpace. It preserves and openly
      shares UCT scholarly outputs including theses, dissertations, journal
      articles, reports, and open educational resources. The repository exposes
      a standards-compliant OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting interface supporting
      verbs such as Identify, ListRecords, and ListMetadataFormats.
    humanURL: https://open.uct.ac.za/
    baseURL: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/oai/request
    tags: [ Institutional Repository, OAI-PMH, DSpace, Metadata, Open Access, Scholarly ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://open.uct.ac.za/
      - type: Authentication
        url: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
  - aid: university-of-cape-town:zivahub-figshare
    name: ZivaHub Open Data (Figshare API)
    description: >-
      ZivaHub is UCT's institutional open data repository for research data and
      scholarly outputs, powered by Figshare for Institutions and certified with
      the CoreTrustSeal in 2025. Public ZivaHub content is accessible
      programmatically through the public Figshare REST API, which provides
      article, collection, and project metadata in JSON.
    humanURL: https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/
    baseURL: https://api.figshare.com/v2
    tags: [ Open Data, Research Data, Figshare, Repository, Metadata ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.figshare.com/
      - type: Website
        url: https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/
common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://www.uct.ac.za/
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/uct-cbio
  - type: LinkedIn
    url: https://za.linkedin.com/school/university-of-cape-town/
  - type: Plans
    url: plans/university-of-cape-town-plans-pricing.yml
  - type: RateLimits
    url: rate-limits/university-of-cape-town-rate-limits.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: finops/university-of-cape-town-finops.yml
  - type: Review
    url: review.yml
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/university-of-cape-town-zivahub-figshare.yaml
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/university-of-cape-town-datafirst-nada.yaml
  - type: x-json-schema
    url: json-schema/university-of-cape-town-article-schema.json
  - type: x-json-schema
    url: json-schema/university-of-cape-town-study-schema.json
  - type: x-json-structure
    url: json-structure/university-of-cape-town-article-structure.json
  - type: x-json-structure
    url: json-structure/university-of-cape-town-study-structure.json
  - type: x-spectral-rules
    url: rules/university-of-cape-town-rules.yml
  - type: x-vocabulary
    url: vocabulary/university-of-cape-town-vocabulary.yml
  - type: x-json-ld
    url: json-ld/university-of-cape-town-context.jsonld
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: [email protected]