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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the ‘data revolution’ hold particular challenges for data collection, analysis, dissemination, and access in Africa. The paper interrogates both from the perspective of the community of demographers and amplifies and explains these challenges, and situates them in a broader theory of the political economy of national statistics. The paper concludes that the prospects for comprehensively monitoring the SDGs, as well as a ‘data revolution’ in Africa are elusive, unless strong and systematic investments are made in the systems that collect, produce and disseminate data for development in the region, and without a deeper understanding of the role of official statistics in the construction of the modern state.