For decades the CIA World Factbook was the world’s free public reference for country data. When it faded, developers, journalists, and students lost a common source. Here is what was at stake — and how we rebuilt it as open data.
First published in 1981 and online since the late 1990s, the CIA World Factbook became the default free, public dataset on every country on Earth — cited in classrooms, newsrooms, and code. As it became harder to rely on as a current, machine-readable, multilingual source, an entire category of public-interest data was effectively orphaned. Bamwor reconstructed and reopened it: 261 countries and territories, 5.2 million cities, in four languages, with a free API, a permanent DOI, and a CC BY 4.0 license. This brief shows what that orphaned data still tells us about the world in 2026.
India is now the world’s most populous country at about 1.42 billion people, ahead of China’s 1.41 billion — a historic crossover the Factbook once tracked as the canonical free source. Together the two nations are home to more than one in three people alive today. Without an open, updated reference, milestones like this risk being recorded only behind paywalls.
Compare India vs China →The three largest economies by GDP (PPP) — China (~$35T), the United States (~$29T), and India (~$15T) — sit atop a steep curve. Measured per person, the gap is starker still: from over $200,000 a year in the wealthiest microstates to under $1,000 in the poorest. This was exactly the kind of comparison the Factbook made free and standardized for everyone.
See full GDP ranking →Niger records the world’s highest birth rate at about 47 births per 1,000 people, while South Korea sits near the bottom at roughly 6 — a nearly sevenfold gap that maps the future shape of the global workforce. Sub-Saharan Africa fills the top of the ranking; East Asia and Southern Europe fill the bottom.
See full birth rate ranking →Internet penetration ranges from near-universal in Iceland, Denmark, and the UAE (around 99%) to under 10% in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. The global average sits near 62%. Tracking who is — and is not — connected is foundational to reporting on technology, development, and inequality, and it was a staple of the Factbook.
See full internet users ranking →Rebuilding the data was a chance to extend it. Bamwor publishes nine proprietary composite indices — spanning economy, military strength, digital infrastructure, education, healthcare, and urbanization — scored across 244 countries. These are derived, citable metrics the Factbook never offered, available openly for analysis and reporting.
Explore the Bamwor indices →The full reconstruction — 261 countries and 5.2 million cities, in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian — is published under CC BY 4.0 with a free API and a permanent DOI (10.5281/zenodo.20512007) archived on Zenodo. Journalists, researchers, and developers can download, cite, and build on it without a paywall or an account.
Download the open datasets →Source: Bamwor World Encyclopedia — CIA World Factbook
The CIA World Factbook proved that country data is a public good — most valuable when it is free, standardized, and open to all. Bamwor exists to keep it that way: an independent, open reconstruction maintained for journalists, researchers, students, and developers. Every figure in this brief is downloadable as CSV, queryable through a free API, and citable via a permanent DOI. Use it, check it, and build on it.
Bamwor. (2026). The Data the CIA World Factbook Left Orphaned. Bamwor World Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2026-06-08, from https://bamwor.com/en/reports/cia-world-factbook-orphaned-data@misc{bamwor_the_data_the_cia_world_factbook_left_orphaned_2026,
author = {Bamwor},
title = {The Data the CIA World Factbook Left Orphaned},
year = {2026},
url = {https://bamwor.com/en/reports/cia-world-factbook-orphaned-data},
note = {Bamwor World Encyclopedia. Accessed 2026-06-08}
}