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This study analyses the spatiotemporal variability of meteorological drought over Africa and its nine climate subregions from an ensemble of 19 multisource datasets (gauge-based, satellite-based and reanalysis) over the period 1983–2014. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) is used to represent drought on a 3-month scale. We analyse various drought characteristics (duration, events, frequency, intensity, and severity) for all drought months, and moderate, severe, and extreme drought conditions. The results show that drought occurs across the continent, with the equatorial regions displaying more negative SPI values, especially for moderate and severe droughts. On the other hand, Eastern Sahara and Western Southern Africa portray less negative SPI values. The study also reveals that extreme drought months have the largest interannual variability, followed by all drought months and severe drought months. The trend analysis of SPI shows a significantly increasing trend in drought episodes over most regions of Africa, especially tropical areas. Drought characteristics vary greatly across different regions of Africa, with some areas experiencing longer and more severe droughts than others. The equatorial region has the highest number of drought events, with longer durations for severe and extreme drought months. The Eastern Sahara region has a low number of drought events but with longer durations for moderate, severe, and extreme drought months, leading to an overall higher drought severity over the area. In contrast, Western Southern Africa and Madagascar display a consistently low drought severity for all categories. The study demonstrates the importance of conducting drought analysis for different drought levels instead of using all drought months. Drought management and adaptation strategies need to enhance community resilience to changing drought situations and consider drought variability in order to mitigate different impacts of drought across the continent.