University of Cape Town

aid: university-of-cape-town
name: University of Cape Town
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
description: 'The University of Cape Town (UCT) is South Africa''s oldest and highest-ranked public research university and
  the top-ranked institution on the African continent. UCT operates no central developer portal and publishes no institution-wide
  API programme; its student-information, finance, HR and learning-management systems are vendor platforms behind institutional
  authentication and are not programmable from outside. What UCT does operate itself is a small, genuinely first-party research-data
  footprint: DataFirst, a UCT research unit, runs a NADA microdata catalog on www.datafirst.uct.ac.za with a public unauthenticated
  REST/JSON API over 582 studies; OpenUCT, the institutional repository, runs DSpace 7.4 on open.uct.ac.za and exposes both
  an OAI-PMH 2.0 harvesting endpoint and the DSpace REST API anonymously; and UCT''s ICTS operates a SAML 2.0 identity provider
  registered in the South African Identity Federation (SAFIRE) and published to eduGAIN. UCT is a DataCite direct member (symbol
  DAFI, ROR 03p74gp79) minting under prefixes 10.25828 and 10.25375. ZivaHub, the open data repository, is a Figshare for
  Institutions tenancy — zivahub.uct.ac.za CNAMEs to figshare.com — so the data is UCT''s and the API contract is Figshare''s;
  it is recorded here as a tenant relationship and is deliberately not scored as UCT engineering.'
type: Index
x-operator-summary:
  institution: 4
  tenant: 1
  vendor: 0
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  generated: '2026-08-30'
  method: probed
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: none
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: true
  label: Free · no key required for catalog metadata
  confidence: high
  source:
  - probe
  generated: '2026-08-30'
  method: probed
position: Producing
access: Public
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/university-of-cape-town.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/university-of-cape-town/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- Public Research University
- South Africa
- Africa
- Research Data
- Open Data
- Institutional Repository
- OAI-PMH
- Identity Federation
- Microdata
- Research Computing
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-30'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: university-of-cape-town:datafirst-nada
  name: DataFirst Microdata Catalog API (NADA)
  x-operator: institution
  x-surface-class: OpenData
  description: 'DataFirst is a University of Cape Town research unit and data service providing online access to survey and
    administrative microdata from South Africa and other African countries. Its open data portal runs the NADA (National Data
    Archive) application on UCT''s own host and exposes a public, unauthenticated REST/JSON API. Probed live on 2026-08-30:
    GET /catalog returned 582 studies; /catalog/search, /catalog/{idno}, /catalog/data_files/{idno} and /catalog/variables/{idno}
    all answered 200. Catalog metadata is fully open; the underlying microdata for `licensed` studies still requires an approved
    DataFirst account, and that request workflow has no API.'
  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: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/university-of-cape-town-catalog-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog
  - type: Website
    url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/
  - type: TermsOfService
    url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/terms-of-use
  - type: x-collection
    url: collections/university-of-cape-town-catalog-api.opencollection.json
  - type: x-postman
    url: collections/university-of-cape-town-catalog-api.postman_collection.json
- aid: university-of-cape-town:openuct-oai-pmh
  name: OpenUCT Institutional Repository OAI-PMH
  x-operator: institution
  x-surface-class: ResearchRepository
  description: 'OpenUCT is the University of Cape Town''s open access institutional repository, running DSpace 7.4 on UCT''s
    own host. It preserves and openly shares UCT scholarly outputs including theses, dissertations, journal articles, reports
    and open educational resources, and exposes a standards-compliant OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting interface. Probed live
    on 2026-08-30: Identify returns repositoryName OpenUCT, repositoryIdentifier open.uct.ac.za, adminEmail lucian.botha@uct.ac.za,
    earliest datestamp 1994; ListMetadataFormats and ListSets both answer 200. The repository software is open-source DSpace;
    the deployment, the host and the endpoint are UCT''s.'
  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: x-identify
    url: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
  - type: x-conformance
    url: conformance/university-of-cape-town-conformance.yml
- aid: university-of-cape-town:openuct-dspace-rest
  name: OpenUCT DSpace REST API
  x-operator: institution
  x-surface-class: ResearchRepository
  description: 'The OpenUCT repository additionally exposes the DSpace 7 REST API anonymously at open.uct.ac.za/server/api,
    returning application/hal+json. Probed live on 2026-08-30: the API root reports dspaceName OpenUCT and dspaceVersion "DSpace
    7.4"; /server/api/core/communities and /server/api/discover/search/objects both answer 200 without credentials. No OpenAPI
    is saved for this surface — the REST contract is DSpace''s software contract shipped by every DSpace 7 site, not UCT-authored,
    and crediting UCT for it would repeat exactly the misattribution this profile exists to remove. UCT operates the deployment;
    the contract belongs upstream.'
  humanURL: https://open.uct.ac.za/
  baseURL: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/api
  tags:
  - Institutional Repository
  - DSpace
  - REST
  - HAL
  - Open Access
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/api
  - type: x-upstream-contract
    url: https://github.com/DSpace/RestContract
- aid: university-of-cape-town:identity-provider
  name: UCT Identity Provider (SAML 2.0 / SAFIRE / eduGAIN)
  x-operator: institution
  x-surface-class: IdentityFederation
  description: 'UCT''s Information and Communication Technology Services operates a SAML 2.0 identity provider registered
    in the South African Identity Federation (SAFIRE, registry id 000002) and published onward to eduGAIN. Confirmed in SAFIRE''s
    signed production metadata on 2026-08-30: entityID https://srvslsfed001.uct.ac.za/simplesaml/saml2/idp/metadata.php, schacHomeOrganization
    uct.ac.za, homeOrganizationType university, scopes uct.ac.za / wf.uct.ac.za / ^([a-z0-9]{1,63})\.uct\.ac\.za$, REFEDS
    Research & Scholarship and Anonymous entity categories, SIRTFI assurance, and a published CSIRT security contact. This
    is a machine-readable, institution-operated surface — it is not a REST API and has no token endpoint an agent can call,
    but it is the one interface UCT publishes to the world that is unambiguously its own engineering. UCT publishes the metadata
    itself at idp.uct.ac.za (200, application/samlmetadata+xml, 2026-08-30); the entityID hostname srvslsfed001.uct.ac.za
    is an internal name that does not resolve publicly, which is normal for a SAML entityID.'
  humanURL: https://icts.uct.ac.za/
  baseURL: https://idp.uct.ac.za/simplesaml/saml2/idp/metadata.php
  x-entity-id: https://srvslsfed001.uct.ac.za/simplesaml/saml2/idp/metadata.php
  tags:
  - Identity Federation
  - SAML
  - SAFIRE
  - eduGAIN
  - Single Sign-On
  - SIRTFI
  properties:
  - type: x-metadata
    url: https://idp.uct.ac.za/simplesaml/saml2/idp/metadata.php
    name: UCT-published SAML 2.0 IdP metadata (application/samlmetadata+xml)
  - type: x-metadata
    url: https://metadata.safire.ac.za/safire-prod-idp.xml
    name: The same entity as signed and republished by SAFIRE
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://safire.ac.za/participants/idp/list/
  - type: PrivacyPolicy
    url: https://idp.uct.ac.za/Privacy.html
  - type: x-conformance
    url: conformance/university-of-cape-town-conformance.yml
- aid: university-of-cape-town:zivahub-figshare
  name: ZivaHub Open Data (Figshare for Institutions tenancy)
  x-operator: tenant
  x-surface-class: ResearchRepository
  x-vendor: figshare
  x-vendor-repo: https://github.com/api-evangelist/figshare
  description: 'ZivaHub is UCT''s institutional open data repository for research data and scholarly outputs. It is a Figshare
    for Institutions TENANCY, not a UCT system: zivahub.uct.ac.za CNAMEs to figshare.com, and public ZivaHub content is served
    by the shared api.figshare.com/v2 endpoint that every Figshare customer calls. The deposits, the DOIs (minted through
    DataCite client figshare.uct under UCT''s DAFI membership) and the CoreTrustSeal certification are UCT''s; the API contract
    is Figshare''s. No Figshare OpenAPI is stored under this institution — four such specs were removed from this repo on
    2026-08-30 — and the contract is scored against Figshare''s own repo where it belongs. This entry records a real institutional
    relationship, not a UCT API.'
  humanURL: https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/
  baseURL: https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/
  tags:
  - Open Data
  - Research Data
  - Figshare
  - Repository
  - Tenant
  - CoreTrustSeal
  properties:
  - type: Website
    url: https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.figshare.com/
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.uct.ac.za/
- type: OpenData
  url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/
  name: DataFirst open microdata portal
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://open.uct.ac.za/
  name: OpenUCT institutional repository (DSpace 7.4)
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/
  name: ZivaHub open data repository (Figshare tenancy)
- type: IdentityFederation
  url: https://metadata.safire.ac.za/safire-prod-idp.xml
  name: UCT SAML 2.0 IdP metadata in SAFIRE
- type: ResearchComputing
  url: https://ucthpc.uct.ac.za/
  name: UCT High Performance Computing
- type: ResearchComputing
  url: https://www.uct.ac.za/eresearch
  name: UCT eResearch
- type: LibraryCatalog
  url: https://lib.uct.ac.za/
  name: UCT Libraries (discovery layer is vendor-operated)
- type: AIPolicy
  url: https://cilt.uct.ac.za/artificial-intelligence
  name: UCT Framework for Artificial Intelligence in Education
- type: AIPolicy
  url: https://libguides.lib.uct.ac.za/c.php?g=1440358&p=11020298
  name: UCT AI in Education Framework (library guide)
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/uct-eresearch
  name: UCT eResearch on GitHub
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/uct-cbio
  name: UCT Computational Biology on GitHub
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://za.linkedin.com/school/university-of-cape-town/
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.news.uct.ac.za/
  name: UCT News
- type: Support
  url: https://icts.uct.ac.za/
  name: UCT ICTS
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://uct.ac.za/calendar/terms
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://uct.ac.za/protection-personal-information-act-popia
  name: Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) at UCT
- type: x-ror
  url: https://ror.org/03p74gp79
- type: OpenAPI
  url: openapi/_original/university-of-cape-town-datafirst-nada.yaml
- type: x-conformance
  url: conformance/university-of-cape-town-conformance.yml
- type: x-authentication
  url: authentication/university-of-cape-town-authentication.yml
- type: x-errors
  url: errors/university-of-cape-town-errors.yml
- type: x-json-schema
  url: json-schema/university-of-cape-town-study-schema.json
- type: x-json-schema
  url: json-schema/university-of-cape-town-datafile-schema.json
- type: x-json-schema
  url: json-schema/university-of-cape-town-variable-schema.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
- type: CapabilityMap
  url: capabilities/university-of-cape-town-capability-edges.yml
  name: University of Cape Town Business Capability Map
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/university-of-cape-town-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/university-of-cape-town-domain-security.yml
- 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
x-coverage:
  state: covered
  reason: covered
  detail: Four institution-operated surfaces were found and probed live on 2026-08-30 — the DataFirst NADA catalog API, the
    OpenUCT OAI-PMH endpoint, the OpenUCT DSpace REST API, and UCT's SAML 2.0 identity provider in SAFIRE/eduGAIN — plus one
    tenant relationship (ZivaHub on Figshare for Institutions). UCT still has no central developer portal, no course-catalog
    or timetable API, no campus-life API and no public API programme; the classes hunted and not found are listed under surfaces_absent.
    Coverage is `covered` rather than `none` because real first-party machine-readable surfaces exist and are documented here,
    not because the footprint is large.
  generated: '2026-08-30'
  method: probed
  surfaces_absent:
  - class: CourseCatalog
    detail: No api.uct.ac.za or courses.uct.ac.za responded (both timed out at the network layer); no student-built, institution-blessed
      timetable API of the UCLAPI / NUSMods kind was found for UCT.
  - class: OpenDataPortal
    detail: data.uct.ac.za does not resolve; there is no CKAN or Socrata portal.
  - class: LearningManagementSystem
    detail: Amathuba (D2L Brightspace) and legacy Vula (Sakai) are vendor platforms behind authentication; no UCT-published
      LTI or Caliper surface.
  - class: LibraryCatalog
    detail: Discovery runs on a vendor stack; no UCT-operated catalog API found.
  - class: CampusLife
    detail: No transit, dining, occupancy, room-booking or printing API found.
  evidence:
  - url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/api/catalog?limit=2
    status: 200
  - url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/api/catalog/mwi-alpha-him-karonga-2002-2017-v1
    status: 200
  - url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/api/catalog/variables/mwi-alpha-him-karonga-2002-2017-v1
    status: 200
  - url: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
    status: 200
  - url: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/api
    status: 200
  - url: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/api/discover/search/objects?size=1
    status: 200
  - url: https://metadata.safire.ac.za/safire-prod-idp.xml
    status: 200
  - url: https://idp.uct.ac.za/simplesaml/saml2/idp/metadata.php
    status: 200
    note: UCT-published SAML metadata, application/samlmetadata+xml
  - url: https://api.datacite.org/providers?query=cape+town
    status: 200
  - url: https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/
    status: 202
    note: empty 202 bot challenge from the Figshare edge; host is live, CNAME figshare.com
  - url: https://data.uct.ac.za/
    status: 0
    note: DNS does not resolve
  - url: https://api.uct.ac.za/
    status: 0
    note: connection timed out
  - url: https://courses.uct.ac.za/
    status: 0
    note: connection timed out
  - url: https://www.uct.ac.za/llms.txt
    status: 404
x-attribution-correction:
  date: '2026-08-30'
  pipeline: pipeline-university
  removed_vendor_contracts: 4
  detail: 'Four Figshare contracts and ten derived artifacts were removed from this repo. openapi/_original/university-of-cape-town-zivahub-figshare.yaml
    and its three refine-split outputs (articles, collections, projects) all declared servers[0].url https://api.figshare.com/v2
    and info.contact "Figshare Support" — a host four other institutions in this cohort also claimed. The apis.yml entries
    for them additionally carried a WELD: they were based on www.datafirst.uct.ac.za while the specs underneath said api.figshare.com,
    so a single vendor contract was presenting as three UCT APIs on a UCT host. The relationship is preserved as the ZivaHub
    tenant entry above; only the misattributed engineering credit is gone.'
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com