The Gulf of Guinea countries are mostly characterized by one or two rainy seasons in the south and one, much shorter, in the north; in the north, Sahelian conditions prevail with one season of varying length that peaks in August. August is also the time when the "short dry season" occurs in the bimodal rainfall areas. Although the general crop calendar can be modified by altitude, particularly in Guinea, maize and rice are widely grown and usually harvested towards the end of the year, around December. Yams and cassava are important crops in the region, but their phenology is not well defined, particularly in the case of cassava. When conditions permit and the growing season is sufficiently long in the south of the region, a "second"maize crop is usually grown and harvested around September. This “second” crop is usually the main one in terms of production.

Based on VHI profiles, conditions in the MPZ were average(19.4 percent of pixels) or above average throughout the region over the middle and the end of the reporting period, indicating favorable conditions for the maize and rice crops harvested at the end of the year in the southern part of the region. This is also where maximum VCI values tend to be highest, there by confirming satisfactory crop condition, particularly in the west where all countries show rather high maximum VCI values of around 0.84, with a slight positive departure over the reference period.

October was characterized by a marked dip in VHI in many areas, particularly west of Nigeria, including most of the MPZ. It is likely that long cycled crops have been affected. Caution is, however, required as the MPZ still enjoys large extension of forest that are not filtered out in the current VHI profile analysis. Un cropped arable land is concentrated in central Nigeria, in the main maize growing areas where it probably corresponds to post-harvest conditions. Maps and graphs for the West Africa MPZ are provided in figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1. West Africa MPZ: Farming intensity and stress