electricsheepafrica/africa-zwe-rainfall-subnational

Zimbabwe: Rainfall Indicators at Subnational Level

Publisher: WFP - World Food Programme · Source: HDX · License: cc-by · Updated: 2026-04-03

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Abstract

This dataset contains dekadal rainfall indicators, computed from Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation satellite imagery with insitu Station data (CHIRPS) version 2 and the CHIRPS-GEFS short term rainfall forecasts, aggregated by subnational administrative units.

Included indicators are (for each dekad):

• 10 day rainfall [mm] (rfh)
• rainfall 1-month rolling aggregation [mm] (r1h)
• rainfall 3-month rolling aggregation [mm] (r3h)
• rainfall long term average [mm] (rfh_avg)
• rainfall 1-month rolling aggregation long term average [mm] (r1h_avg)
• rainfall 3-month rolling aggregation long term average [mm] (r3h_avg)
• rainfall anomaly [%] (rfq)
• rainfall 1-month anomaly [%] (r1q)
• rainfall 3-month anomaly [%] (r3q)

The administrative units used for aggregation are based on WFP data and contain a Pcode reference attributed to each unit. The number of input pixels used to create the aggregates, is provided in the n_pixels column. Finally, the type column indicates if the value is based on a forecast, a preliminary or a final product.

Forecasts are issued on the 6th, 16th, and 26th of each month for the upcoming 10-day period (dekad), then updated with improved versions on the 1st, 11th, and 21st. Preliminary observations replace the previous dekad’s forecast on the 3rd, 13th, and 23rd, and are later replaced by final observations—published mid-month (13th or 23rd)—covering all three dekads of the prior month. Please find a summary below:

Publication Day: Forecast type, Covers (Dekad)

• 1st: Updated forecast, 1–10 of the same month
• 6th: Initial forecast, 11–20 of the same month
• 11th: Updated forecast, 1–10 of the same month
• 16th: Initial forecast, 21–end of the same month
• 21st: Updated forecast, 11–20 of the same month
• 26th: Initial forecast, 1–10 of the following month

For more on CHIRPS-GEFS forecasts, see: https://www.chc.ucsb.edu/data/chirps-gefs

For further details, please see the methodology section.

Each row in this dataset represents time-series observations. Temporal coverage is indicated by the date column(s). Geographic scope: ZWE.

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

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Dataset Characteristics

Domain	Climate and environment
Unit of observation	Time-series observations
Rows (total)	163,000
Columns	17 (12 numeric, 4 categorical, 1 datetime)
Train split	130,400 rows
Test split	32,600 rows
Geographic scope	ZWE
Publisher	WFP - World Food Programme
HDX last updated	2026-04-03

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Variables

Geographic — n_pixels (range 1.0–2555.0).

Temporal — date.

Identifier / Metadata — adm_id (range 900969.0–1010827.0), pcode (ZW10, ZW1302, ZW1105), esa_source (HDX), esa_processed (2026-04-06).

Other — adm_level (range 1.0–2.0), rfh (range 0.0–349.6628), rfh_avg (range 0.0–105.0345), r1h (range 0.0–671.9186), r1h_avg (range 0.0–284.8392) and 6 others.

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Quick Start

from datasets import load_dataset

ds    = load_dataset("electricsheepafrica/africa-zwe-rainfall-subnational")
train = ds["train"].to_pandas()
test  = ds["test"].to_pandas()

print(train.shape)
train.head()

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Schema

Column	Type	Null %	Range / Sample Values
date	datetime64[ns]	0.0%
adm_level	int64	0.0%	1.0 – 2.0 (mean 1.9)
adm_id	int64	0.0%	900969.0 – 1010827.0 (mean 999800.93)
pcode	object	0.0%	ZW10, ZW1302, ZW1105
n_pixels	float64	0.0%	1.0 – 2555.0 (mean 266.08)
rfh	float64	0.0%	0.0 – 349.6628 (mean 18.8436)
rfh_avg	float64	0.0%	0.0 – 105.0345 (mean 19.1449)
r1h	float64	0.1%	0.0 – 671.9186 (mean 56.4892)
r1h_avg	float64	0.1%	0.0 – 284.8392 (mean 57.3871)
r3h	float64	0.5%	0.0 – 1523.0 (mean 168.2442)
r3h_avg	float64	0.5%	0.0 – 728.369 (mean 171.4808)
rfq	float64	0.0%	8.9552 – 722.4563 (mean 100.1497)
r1q	float64	0.1%	10.2284 – 601.9382 (mean 100.3784)
r3q	float64	0.5%	15.9129 – 481.2706 (mean 100.1197)
version	object	0.0%	final, prelim, forecast
esa_source	object	0.0%	HDX
esa_processed	object	0.0%	2026-04-06

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Numeric Summary

Column	Min	Max	Mean	Median
adm_level	1.0	2.0	1.9	2.0
adm_id	900969.0	1010827.0	999800.93	1010776.5
n_pixels	1.0	2555.0	266.08	138.5
rfh	0.0	349.6628	18.8436	4.3483
rfh_avg	0.0	105.0345	19.1449	7.5926
r1h	0.0	671.9186	56.4892	19.4286
r1h_avg	0.0	284.8392	57.3871	24.0
r3h	0.0	1523.0	168.2442	93.0
r3h_avg	0.0	728.369	171.4808	104.3131
rfq	8.9552	722.4563	100.1497	98.6842
r1q	10.2284	601.9382	100.3784	98.3607
r3q	15.9129	481.2706	100.1197	96.8119

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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. 1 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.

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Limitations

• Data originates from WFP - World Food Programme and has not been independently validated by ESA.
• Automated cleaning cannot correct for misreported values, definitional inconsistencies, or sampling bias in the original collection.
• Refer to the original HDX dataset page for the publisher's own methodology notes and caveats.

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Citation

@dataset{hdx_africa_zwe_rainfall_subnational,
  title     = {Zimbabwe: Rainfall Indicators at Subnational Level},
  author    = {WFP - World Food Programme},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://data.humdata.org/dataset/zwe-rainfall-subnational},
  note      = {Repackaged for machine learning by Electric Sheep Africa (https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica)}
}

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