The dataset was constructed as part of research on the availability of reliable individual-level mortality data in Senegal and changes in infant mortality between 1880 and 1921. It contains a sample of five birth cohorts born approximately ten years apart, in 1880, 1891, 1904, 1912, and 1920, which are followed until death or age 1.

Furthermore, the dataset includes records of stillbirths, which have not yet been analyzed. To the author's knowledge, this is the first openly accessible individual-level dataset on infant mortality covering a colonial African population. It was constructed based on civil registration records in Saint-Louis, Senegal, whose registers extend back at least to the seventeenth century, allowing the dataset to be expanded to earlier periods. The sources on which this dataset are publicly and digitally available on the website of the Archives Nationales d'Outre Mer, located in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Colonial Civil registration system of the Four Communes of Senegal, then occupied by France.