The AfriBasins framework was developed for FishBase (www.fishbase.org) as a uniform, pan African system to document and query African freshwater fish distributions. Based largely on the HydroBasins dataset, and using a standardised methodology to delimit basins and subbasins, the combined set of AfriBasins covers the whole of Africa. AfriBasins can be freely downloaded from www.fishbaseforAfrica.be. Aside from the basic registration and databasing of fish distributions, the AfriBasins framework also serves as a basis for fish distribution analysis. A cluster and correspondence analysis on the AfriBasins of the Congo River basin, used as a test case, identified four main clusters with a similar fish fauna: the southern Congo basin cluster, with the Upper Congo basin and the closely associated Kasai drainage; the Lower Congo basin cluster, with marine and brackish water species but also many freshwater endemics; the northern and north-eastern Congo basin cluster, with the Middle Congo River main channel and its right bank tributaries upstream from and including the Ubangi; and a cluster with the central left bank affluents of the Middle Congo together with north-western affluents. Depending on the type of analysis, questions remain on the position of Pool Malebo (grouped with either the Lower or Middle Congo) and the Lomami, the latter with both Middle and southern Congo basin species. Possibly the Lomami AfriBasin needs to be redefined, illustrating the flexible nature of the AfriBasins framework, where (re)grouping or splitting is relatively straightforward. Other applications related to small and broadscale fish distribution, or to the identification of fish communities and their distributions, or to linking phylogeny with distribution and possible colonisation pathways, may all benefit from the availability of a continent-wide, standardised framework.