electricsheepafrica/africa-bwa-rainfall-subnational

Botswana: 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: BWA.

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)	32,600
Columns	17 (12 numeric, 4 categorical, 1 datetime)
Train split	26,080 rows
Test split	6,520 rows
Geographic scope	BWA
Publisher	WFP - World Food Programme
HDX last updated	2026-04-03

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Variables

Geographic — n_pixels (range 68.0–5103.0).

Temporal — date.

Identifier / Metadata — adm_id (range 654.0–6331.0), pcode (BW12, BW15, BW0901), esa_source (HDX), esa_processed (2026-04-08).

Other — adm_level (range 1.0–2.0), rfh (range 0.0–181.7675), rfh_avg (range 0.0–58.8319), r1h (range 0.0–349.402), r1h_avg (range 0.0–146.5295) and 6 others.

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Quick Start

from datasets import load_dataset

ds    = load_dataset("electricsheepafrica/africa-bwa-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 1.5)
adm_id	int64	0.0%	654.0 – 6331.0 (mean 3492.5)
pcode	object	0.0%	BW12, BW15, BW0901
n_pixels	float64	0.0%	68.0 – 5103.0 (mean 2025.8)
rfh	float64	0.0%	0.0 – 181.7675 (mean 11.5646)
rfh_avg	float64	0.0%	0.0 – 58.8319 (mean 11.7697)
r1h	float64	0.1%	0.0 – 349.402 (mean 34.6987)
r1h_avg	float64	0.1%	0.0 – 146.5295 (mean 35.278)
r3h	float64	0.5%	0.0 – 687.1935 (mean 103.527)
r3h_avg	float64	0.5%	0.035 – 380.028 (mean 105.4612)
rfq	float64	0.0%	15.8941 – 659.8471 (mean 99.8445)
r1q	float64	0.1%	13.9608 – 454.7857 (mean 99.5937)
r3q	float64	0.5%	20.463 – 421.3304 (mean 99.318)
version	object	0.0%	final, prelim, forecast
esa_source	object	0.0%	HDX
esa_processed	object	0.0%	2026-04-08

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Numeric Summary

Column	Min	Max	Mean	Median
adm_level	1.0	2.0	1.5	1.5
adm_id	654.0	6331.0	3492.5	3492.5
n_pixels	68.0	5103.0	2025.8	1152.0
rfh	0.0	181.7675	11.5646	4.1179
rfh_avg	0.0	58.8319	11.7697	8.0056
r1h	0.0	349.402	34.6987	17.7885
r1h_avg	0.0	146.5295	35.278	22.4165
r3h	0.0	687.1935	103.527	73.1429
r3h_avg	0.035	380.028	105.4612	84.8936
rfq	15.8941	659.8471	99.8445	98.205
r1q	13.9608	454.7857	99.5937	97.6951
r3q	20.463	421.3304	99.318	94.9387

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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_bwa_rainfall_subnational,
  title     = {Botswana: Rainfall Indicators at Subnational Level},
  author    = {WFP - World Food Programme},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://data.humdata.org/dataset/bwa-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.