  Rainfall is an important variable to be able to monitor and forecast across
Africa, due to its impact on agriculture, food security, climate related
diseases and public health. Numerical Weather Models (NWM) are an important
component of this work, due to their complete spatial coverage, high
resolution, and ability to forecast into the future. In this study, we seek to
evaluate the spatiotemporal skill of short-term rainfall forecasts of rainfall
across Africa. Specifically, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather
Forecasts (ECMWF) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction-Global
Forecast System (NCEP-GFS) forecast models are verified by Rainfall Estimates
2.0 (RFE2) and African Rainfall Climatology Version 2 (ARC2), which are fused
products of satellite and in-situ observations and are commonly used in
analysis of African rainfall. We found that the model rainfall forecasts show
good consistency with the satellite rainfall observations in spatial
distribution over Africa on the seasonal timescale. Evaluation metrics show
high spatial and seasonal variations over the African continent, including a
strong link to the location of the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ) and
topographically enhanced precipitation. The rainfall forecasts at one week
aggregation time are improved against daily forecasts.
