The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is the largest biodiversity database providing a single point of access to more than 500 million records of nearly 1.5 million species, shared openly and freely by hundreds of institutions worldwide (www.gbif.org). Most of the data consists of species occurrence records based on preserved specimens and field observations. In addition, there are also species checklists and metadata only datasets. GBIF.org has recently been upgraded to host sample-based data, that is, the kinds of quantitative data from environmental, ecological, and natural resource investigations, for example, species and population monitoring data. Global aggregators of biodiversity data such as GBIF play a critical role in facilitating the discovery and unification of disparate data and greatly facilitate data sharing and repatriation. An analysis of biodiversity data of species records occurring in Africa and published through GBIF will be presented. The results will show which institutions are publishing data on African biodiversity, the content and types of those data, as well as the data gaps especially at the geographic and taxonomic scales.