A steering committee, established under the auspices of the Committee on Population and working in coordination with the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes on Aging, will assist in organizing an international conference in Africa on the benefits of and barriers to sharing research data in order to improve public health. The conference will involve the participation of representatives of national science academies in Africa as well as experts in using and generating public health data and will feature presentations and discussions on the benefits of and barriers to sharing research data within the African context. The conference will be held in South Africa. The conference will afford an opportunity to raise the profile of this issue within Africa, enable the Wellcome Trust and its international partners to highlight findings of previous sponsored research on this topic, identify issues that mitigate against public health data sharing and pathways through research and policy venues to foster increased sharing, and, in general, serve as a way to bring more African voices and perspectives into the dialogue. A rapporteur-authored summary will be prepared that can help to inform the future course of public health data sharing in Africa.