Significant water deficits will continue to emerge across the north, though exceptional deficits will shrink. Deficits will diminish in central and southern Africa but remain intense in Gabon, southeastern DRC, Zambia, and west-central Madagascar. Southern Africa will downgrade to mild deficit. Surpluses will persist in southernmost Sudan, downgrade along the White Nile, increase in Kenya, and emerge in eastern Uganda, Ethiopia, and along the Jubba and Shabelle Rivers through southern Somalia. Exceptional surplus will persist in Tanzania.
Africa: Widespread water deficit in the north; surplus in Tanzania
The forecast through May shows widespread, intense water deficits emerging across northern Africa. Liberia and the Horn of Africa will transition from deficit to near-normal conditions. In Gabon, deficits will downgrade but remain intense, while deficits in central and southern Africa downgrade to moderate. Deficits are also forecast for: Guinea Bissau, western Burkina Faso, northern Ghana, northern Ethiopia, eastern Central African Republic, and western and southern Madagascar. Surplus is forecast for Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, eastern South Sudan, southeastern Sudan, and southern Ethiopia.
Africa: Extreme water deficits forecast for Zambia & Malawi
A notable improvement is forecast for southern Africa and the Horn of Africa where conditions will transition from intense to mild water deficit. Intense deficits are, however, forecast scattered across the southern Sahara and the Sahel, and in a stretch from southern Democratic Republic of the Congo through eastern Zambia into Malawi. Deficits of varying severity remain dominant in many other regions, but surpluses are forecast for northeastern South Sudan and Tanzania, and will be exceptional in Tanzania. After April, severe deficits will emerge across northern Africa and will persist in Zambia.
Africa: Water deficits forecast across the North, Somalia, Gabon
Though the extent of exceptional water deficits across the continent will diminish from March through May, severe to exceptional deficits will continue to emerge across northern Africa, especially in Niger. Exceptional deficits are also forecast in southern Somalia and southern Gabon. Deficits are also expected in Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, southeastern Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, northern Angola, Uganda, western Tanzania, Kenya, and northeastern Mozambique. Surpluses are expected in southeast Sudan, the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana into western Zambia, Zimbabwe, and northern South Africa. From June through August the overall picture will remain much the same, but worth noting is that extreme to exceptional deficits are forecast for nearly all of Egypt during this period, and deficits will emerge in Somaliland, northern Cameroon, and southern Angola.
Africa: Exceptional water deficits recede but widespread deficits persist
The extent of exceptional deficits across the continent will diminish through April, but moderate to extreme deficits will persist across northern Africa and across Africa’s mid-section from Gabon to southern Somalia. Deficits will diminish considerably in Madagascar though persist in the south. Surpluses are forecast in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana, southern Zambia, Zimbabwe, and western Mozambique. The forecast for May through July indicates a downgrade in the intensity of deficits in the southern Sahel and an increase in the intensity of deficits across northern Africa where extreme to exceptional deficits are expected to emerge in eastern Algeria, northern Niger, Libya, Egypt, and northern Sudan.