Using async/await in React data fetching provides cleaner asynchronous code compared to promises, making API calls more readable and easier to debug in functional components. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, I’ve implemented async/await patterns in thousands of React components for data fetching in enterprise applications. From my expertise, the most effective approach is creating async functions inside useEffect with proper error handling and loading states. This method provides clean asynchronous operations with excellent error management and user experience.