Citations from 50 sociology dissertations researching Africa from 15 BTAA institutions were examined for this study. The study examined 11,247 citations and is based on an analysis of 5,160 journal citations using three methods to explore the geographic representation of journal use. The data set contains four ranked lists of journals based on different bibliometric methodologies used to explore area and disciplinary studies. Finally, the data set also include the metadata for the dissertations that were used in the study.