The MENAHDA project is a digital library of official publications from the Middle East and North Africa. By increasing access to official documents from across the region we hope to enhance scholarship, increase public knowledge, and build a community of researchers across the globe.
Our collection currently consists of scans of more than 550 statistical yearbooks from 10 contemporary countries. These publications report a wide range of statistics at the national and subnational levels, such as monthly temperature and precipitation data, price indices for key commodities, national budgets, census figures, public infrastructure, and agricultural statistics. Unlike a census, these data were collected every year from key governmental ministries, then bound in a single volume that was subsequently published and available as a resource both for those working in the government as well as outside specialists who needed access to up-to-date official statistics. In a pre-internet age, these yearbooks were one of the few sources of official statistics readily available to the public.
Unfortunately, accessing these volumes today is often quite difficult. In countries across the MENA region, only a few copies may be existent, often in ministerial collections, archives, or private libraries that are not readily accessible to the public.
Please click here to access the MENAHDA dataverse. The catalogue of scanned materials is here. Access to high quality scans of publications are provided when these are available from a third party site. All scanned volumes from prior to 1949 are available for direct download. For access to volumes published after 1949 please complete the terms of use document. This includes confirming that you will use any data obtained for scholarly research and that you commit to uploading replication materials for any published articles that include statistics provided from the MENAHDA to the dataverse. For general questions please consult our FAQ. For specific questions please contact us.
The MENAHDA project is led by Melani Cammett, Allison Hartnett, and Gabriel Koehler-Derrick.
It was made possible thanks to an amazing team of student RAs including Yara Abuljadayel, Arham Ahmed, Maha al-Suwaidi, Steve Bai, Esat Bayar, Karim Boudlal, Robert Erikson, Amir Hamilton, Elizabeth Herington, Samantha Heyward, Sean Hwang, Mouad Ibno Bachir, Hossam Mabed, Emily Markowitz, Julia Martin, Shubhan Nagendra, Talia Orphee, Sejin Park, Claire Parker, Brendan Powell, Reshini Premaratne, Heide Rogers, Lisa Russo, Hannah Sairah, Lia Frances Swiniarski, Lydia Tahraoui, and Mubadir Zaman.
Thanks to the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) and the Harvard Library for institutional support.