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Over the southern African region the geomagnetic field is weak and changes rapidly. For this area series of geomagnetic field measurements exist since the 1950s. We take advantage of the existing repeat station surveys and observatory annual means, and clean these data sets by eliminating jumps and minimizing external field contributions in the original time-series. This unique data set allows us to obtain a detailed view of the geomagnetic field behaviour in space and time by computing a regional model. For this, we use a system of representation similar to harmonic splines. Initially, the technique is systematically tested on synthetic data. After systematically testing the method on synthetic data, we derive a model for 1961–2001 that gives a detailed view of the fast changes of the geomagnetic field in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]