Long-term variability in hydrological droughts and floods in sub-Saharan Africa: New perspectives from a 65-year daily streamflow dataset

• First gap-free daily streamflow dataset for sub-Saharan Africa (1950–2014). Performances of random forest reconstructions provide satisfactory results. Regionally coherent temporal changes and trends in floods droughts. Significant decadal variations modulating Understanding hydrological variability is crucial importance water resource management (SSA). While existing studies typically focus on individual river basins, suffer from incomplete records, this study provides a new perspective flood drought characteristics (frequency, duration, intensity) across the entire SSA. This achieved by: i) creating 65-year long, complete consisting over 600 gauging stations; ii) quantifying between 1950 2014; iii) evaluating how influences historical trends. Results using forests performance most SSA, except parts southern Africa. Using change-point trend analyses, we identify-three periods that characterise affecting extremes western central Africa, some Africa: 1950s–60s after 1980s–90s, when (droughts) tend to be more (less) intense, frequent persistent; 1970s–80s, are less (more) persistent. Finally, reveal significant all characteristics, which explain aperiodic increasing decreasing stresses considering multiple time-periods analysing recent trends, as previous assessments may have been unrepresentative long-term changes.