Central Africa climates are the most understudied of the continent. Downward rainfall trends have been recorded in the last decades, but their reality is uncertain due to the paucity of raingauge observations. Undernoticed features are the high spatial and low temporal variabilities, which are related to a weak sensitivity to global sea surface temperature forcings. By contrast, within-season rainfall variations show a strong modulation by both Madden-Julian oscillations and convectively-coupled Kelvin waves. A tracking of rain cells helps to understand the spatial patterns of diurnal rainfall variations and seasonal changes in the phase of the rains.