Hi Victor, 

Thanks for the blackland research institute and ITC. CFSR and MPEG satellite rainfall estimates are on you finger tips: See the following links: 

For CFSR Query: http://cfsr.bse.vt.edu/swat-cfsr-v02.pl

For MPEG Query : ftp://ftp.itc.nl/pub/mpe/msg/

regards 

For the period 2007-2013, and by using our SM2RAIN method with ASCAT soil moisture data, we have delivered a daily rainfall data set with 0,25° resolution on a global scale (and of course also for Africa).

See below more details on the method. For the dataset, let me know if you are interested and I'll be glad to send you the data.

Regards,

Luca

Article Soil as a natural rain gauge: Estimating global rainfall fro...

Data SM2RAIN rainfall datasets README

Dear Victor

You should get high resolution gridded data (30 arc-seconds (~1 km)) at the below link in GIS format

http://www.worldclim.org/current

Cheers

Mahjoor

Victor

CHIRP dataset is good for this region too.

http://chg.geog.ucsb.edu/data/chirps/

Best,

Prajjwal

Try to explore this bunch of data:

http://climexp.knmi.nl/

you can also validate some of the daily data with monthly totals from herehttp://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.gpcc.html#detail

Have a look to this very recent study: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016980951500037X

Hi I suppose you got many answers already

but if needed there is a free gridded rainfall data set for monthly values over the period 1940-1998

http://www.hydrosciences.fr/sierem/produits/Grilles/GrillesIRD.asp

Best

Gil

Some of the responses here are quite old as the question is over half a decade ago. For instance, the weblink of USGS FEWS data has changed to https://earlywarning.usgs.gov/fews/search/Africa/West%20Africa which is active for data downloads.

In addition, you can check TAMSAT (Tropical Applications of Meteorology using SATellite data and ground-based observations ). It provides rainfall estimates at 0.0375 x 0.0375 degree spatial resolution (~4km) for all land points on Africa. This is a very good resolution for data analysis. The portal is https://www.tamsat.org.uk/

All the best.

Check our #sm2rain global rainfall datasets, we have found them working good in Africa 🌍

SM2RAIN-ASCAT https://zenodo.org/record/3972958

GPM+SM2RAIN https://zenodo.org/record/3854817

I just found this topic ;-).

What about AgMERRA?

You may want to try Climatic Research Unit datasets of 50 km by 50 km and with a longer timescale. Check the link

https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/hrg/cru_ts_4.03/

The new gridded rainfall data set for Africa 1940 1999 here

http://www.hydrosciences.org/spip.php?article1387&lang=en

Netcdf or ascii

Computed only from observations, no use of reference period, high level of data quality check, more than 6000 observed stations over the continent, which gives these data a high level of reliability.

The details of how this file was computed in this paper:

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/11/2/387

Hi, you might be interested in reading this paper :

Article Evaluation of 23 gridded precipitation datasets across West Africa

This article may be of help:

Article Comparison of satellite remote sensing derived precipitation...

In addition to the above responses..

Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) gridded data

Climate Research Unit (CRU)

You can use satellite-based products: CHIRPS and TAMSAT are often exploited for studies over Africa, CHIRPS is included in FEWSnet, and have a high spatial resolution.

https://www.tamsat.org.uk

https://www.chc.ucsb.edu/data/chirps

Best regards

Try with Cordex Africa databases

https://cordex.org/domains/region-5-africa/

https://www.worldclim.org/data/worldclim21.html

You can check COPERNICUS climate data store, there are some reanalysis products, such as AGERA5:

https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/sis-agrometeorological-indicators?tab=overview

I will recommend MERRA data.

Hi Gebre: not aware of data to the scale you requested. But the following links might lead you to another source of info.

https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/

https://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/

https://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/GSMaP_NOW/index.htm

Hi, please find attached a list of freely available observational datasets (gauge, satellite, reanalysis) I am analyzing in a paper submitted recently. Most of them are global but there are a few specific on Africa. Not all datasets have the required characteristics in terms of resolution or time span, but it may be a useful starting point. I hope it helps.

CHIRPS is okay for Africa

https://app.climateengine.org/climateEngine

Kindly visit http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.UCSB/.CHIRPS/.v2p0/.daily-improved/.global/.0p05/.prcp/ for daily CHIRPS v2.0 data with improved temporal downscaling procedure. All the best!

I think CHIRPS is a good satellite product. Otherwise is you are interested model reanalysis data you should have a look at ERA5.

Use several datasets if possible: CHIRPS, TerraClimate, GPM, MSWEP, etc. For instance, based on comparison with station data, CHIRPS is not doing well over Northwestern Africa, but it may perform better than other products over Equatorial Africa. Most products will be bias-corrected with GHCN station data at monthly timescales.

Here is an interesting paper reviewing most of the datasets available:

Le Coz, Camille, and Nick van de Giesen. "Comparison of rainfall products over sub-saharan africa." Journal of Hydrometeorology 21.4 (2020): 553-596.