electricsheepafrica/africa-daily-cross-border-trade-for-zimbabwe-6819

Zimbabwe Daily FEWS NET Cross Border Trade Data

Publisher: FEWS NET · Source: HDX · License: cc-by · Updated: 2026-03-30

---

Abstract

Zimbabwe Daily cross border trade data collected by FEWS NET since 2018.

Each row in this dataset represents first-level administrative unit observations. Temporal coverage is indicated by the start_date, period_date column(s). Geographic scope: ZWE.

Curated into ML-ready Parquet format by Electric Sheep Africa.

---

Dataset Characteristics

Domain	Humanitarian and development data
Unit of observation	First-level administrative unit observations
Rows (total)	4,003
Columns	42 (9 numeric, 31 categorical, 2 datetime)
Train split	3,202 rows
Test split	800 rows
Geographic scope	ZWE
Publisher	FEWS NET
HDX last updated	2026-03-30

---

Variables

Geographic — reporting_country (Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi), reporting_country_code (ZW, ZM, MW), source_country_code (ZA, ZM, ZW), destination_country_code (ZW, ZM, MZ), flow_type and 11 others.

Temporal — start_date, period_date, value_one_month_ago (range 0.027–10600.0), pct_change_from_one_month_ago (range -100.0–120589.6552).

Outcome / Measurement — value (range 0.0–31800.0).

Identifier / Metadata — source (South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe), indicator_name (TradeFlowQuantity), source_organization, source_document, dataseries_name and 5 others.

Other — border_point (Beitbridge, Chirundu, Dedza), destination (Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique), cpcv2 (P23130AB, P23161AA, R01701AA), product (Roller Maize Meal, Rice (Milled), Beans (mixed)), collection_status and 6 others.

---

Quick Start

from datasets import load_dataset

ds    = load_dataset("electricsheepafrica/africa-daily-cross-border-trade-for-zimbabwe-6819")
train = ds["train"].to_pandas()
test  = ds["test"].to_pandas()

print(train.shape)
train.head()

---

Schema

Column	Type	Null %	Range / Sample Values
reporting_country	object	0.0%	Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi
reporting_country_code	object	0.0%	ZW, ZM, MW
border_point	object	64.5%	Beitbridge, Chirundu, Dedza
source	object	0.0%	South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe
source_country_code	object	0.0%	ZA, ZM, ZW
destination	object	0.0%	Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique
destination_country_code	object	0.0%	ZW, ZM, MZ
cpcv2	object	0.0%	P23130AB, P23161AA, R01701AA
product	object	0.0%	Roller Maize Meal, Rice (Milled), Beans (mixed)
indicator_name	object	0.0%	TradeFlowQuantity
start_date	datetime64[ns]	0.0%
period_date	datetime64[ns]	0.0%
value	float64	0.0%	0.0 – 31800.0 (mean 196.3835)
flow_type	object	0.0%
trade_type	object	0.0%
collection_status	object	0.0%
source_organization	object	0.0%
source_document	object	0.0%
dataseries_name	object	0.0%
dataseries	int64	0.0%	27991.0 – 6960794.0 (mean 2355941.4642)
unit	object	0.0%
unit_type	object	0.0%
unit_name	object	0.0%
status	object	0.0%
common_unit	object	0.0%
common_unit_quantity	float64	0.0%	0.0 – 6221000.0 (mean 24122.8569)
reporting_country_geographic_group	object	0.0%
reporting_country_fewsnet_region	object	0.0%
source_geographic_group	object	0.0%
source_fewsnet_region	object	0.0%
destination_geographic_group	object	0.0%
destination_fewsnet_region	object	0.0%
id	float64	62.5%	1158959.0 – 37980943.0 (mean 2235463.8129)
value_one_month_ago	float64	60.6%	0.027 – 10600.0 (mean 78.7851)
value_one_year_ago	float64	70.8%	0.027 – 6221.0 (mean 77.5408)
value_two_years_ago	float64	79.7%	0.027 – 6221.0 (mean 87.467)
pct_change_from_one_month_ago	float64	60.6%	-100.0 – 120589.6552 (mean 962.0421)
pct_change_from_one_year_ago	float64	70.8%	-100.0 – 40332.6123 (mean 866.9512)
collection_schedule	object	0.0%
data_usage_policy	object	0.0%
esa_source	object	0.0%
esa_processed	object	0.0%

---

Numeric Summary

Column	Min	Max	Mean	Median
value	0.0	31800.0	196.3835	0.0
dataseries	27991.0	6960794.0	2355941.4642	28039.0
common_unit_quantity	0.0	6221000.0	24122.8569	0.0
id	1158959.0	37980943.0	2235463.8129	1161762.5
value_one_month_ago	0.027	10600.0	78.7851	16.92
value_one_year_ago	0.027	6221.0	77.5408	15.76
value_two_years_ago	0.027	6221.0	87.467	12.735
pct_change_from_one_month_ago	-100.0	120589.6552	962.0421	50.0
pct_change_from_one_year_ago	-100.0	40332.6123	866.9512	29.4389

---

Curation

Raw data was downloaded from HDX via the CKAN API and converted to Parquet. Column names were lowercased and standardised to snake_case. Common missing-value markers (N/A, null, none, -, unknown, no data, #N/A) were unified to NaN. 6 column(s) with >80% missing values were removed: value_three_years_ago, value_four_years_ago, value_five_years_ago, two_year_average, five_year_average, pct_change_from_five_year_average. 2 column(s) were cast from string to numeric or datetime based on parse-success rate (>85% threshold). The dataset was split 80/20 into train and test partitions using a fixed random seed (42) and saved as Snappy-compressed Parquet.

---

Limitations

• Data originates from FEWS NET and has not been independently validated by ESA.
• Automated cleaning cannot correct for misreported values, definitional inconsistencies, or sampling bias in the original collection.
• The following columns have >20% missing values and should be treated with caution in modelling: border_point, id, value_one_month_ago, value_one_year_ago, value_two_years_ago, pct_change_from_one_month_ago, pct_change_from_one_year_ago.
• Refer to the original HDX dataset page for the publisher's own methodology notes and caveats.

---

Citation

@dataset{hdx_africa_daily_cross_border_trade_for_zimbabwe_6819,
  title     = {Zimbabwe Daily FEWS NET Cross Border Trade Data},
  author    = {FEWS NET},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://data.humdata.org/dataset/daily_cross_border_trade_for_zimbabwe_6819},
  note      = {Repackaged for machine learning by Electric Sheep Africa (https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica)}
}

---

Electric Sheep Africa — Africa's ML dataset infrastructure. Lagos, Nigeria.