Zambia Cost of Living Dataset (1999–2025): JCTR Basic Needs and Nutrition Basket (BNB/BNNB) Reports and Statements

Abstract

Zambia Cost of Living Dataset (1999–2025): JCTR Basic Needs and Nutrition Basket (BNB/BNNB) Longitudinal Commodity Prices, Living Costs, and Press Statements across 16 Zambian Districts Overview This open-access dataset contains 26+ years of harmonised cost of living data (1999–2025) extracted from the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) Basic Needs Basket (BNB) and Basic Needs and Nutrition Basket (BNNB) reports. It comprises three interrelated components: Itemised Commodity Pricing: Granular monthly price data for food, essential non-food items, and utilities across 16 towns in Zambia, in both ZMW and calculated USD equivalents. Monthly Report Metadata: Extracted socio-economic metadata including survey dates, prevailing exchange rates, collection site frequencies, and arithmetic-validated basket subtotals. Press Statements Text Corpus: Cleaned and structured full-text extracts from JCTR monthly press statements, suitable for Natural Language Processing (NLP) and qualitative analysis. Key Features Longitudinal economic coverage: Over two decades of hyper-localised inflation and cost of living tracking. Geographic granularity: Data mapped to 16 major districts including Lusaka, Ndola, Kitwe, Livingstone, Mongu, and Kasama. Format harmonisation: Heterogeneous legacy formats (DOC, RTF, PDF, HTML) securely parsed into structured, pipe-delimited CSV formats. Provenance tracking: Includes full extraction logs, schema audits, data validation reports, and the original, renamed source bundles. Citation If you use this dataset, please cite: Phiri, L. (2026). Zambia Cost of Living Dataset (1999–2025): JCTR Basic Needs and Nutrition Basket (BNB/BNNB) Reports and Statements. [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21757581 Acknowledgements The author acknowledges the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) for continuously carrying out these vital socio-economic surveys. Gratitude is extended to the DataLab Research Group and the University of Zambia for infrastructure and curation support. License This dataset is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).