The ESA Fire Disturbance Climate Change Initiative (Fire_cci) project has produced maps of global burned area developed from satellite observations. The Small Fire Database (SFD) pixel products have been obtained by combining spectral information from Sentinel-2 MSI data and thermal information from MODIS MOD14MD Collection 6 active fire products.This gridded dataset has been derived from the Small Fire Database (SFD) Burned Area pixel product for Sub-Saharan Africa, v1.1 (also available), which covers Sub-Saharan Africa for the year 2016, by summarising its burned area information into a regular grid covering the Earth at 0.25 x 0.25 degrees resolution and at monthly temporal resolution.