Apart from topographic and soil information which remain unchanged on the human time scale, the simulation of flows from the SWAT model requires other dynamic information such as land use. Three Landsat satellite images (Table 2) were used to produce land cover maps. These are the Landsat Multispectral Scanner System (MSS) of 1978, Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) of 2005 and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) of 2020. The maps produced from the images of 1978 and 2005 were used in the model to simulate the flows during the first (1984–1986 for calibration and 1981–1982 for validation) and the second (2008–2011 for calibration and 2010–2014 for validation) historical period retained. The choice of two relatively distant periods (distinct from the point of view of land cover) aimed to assess the model's performance in simulating the region flows in a situation of land cover change. Taking this aspect into account is currently a major challenge in modelling the flows of tropical rivers, given the strong anthropization recently observed in their catchment areas, the hydrological impacts of which are well known. Recent modelling work in West Africa has already integrated these aspects (Paturel et al. 2017). It would also be interesting to continue this work in Central Africa on larger basins. The choice of these periods also considered the availability of observed hydrological data (to calibrate the model) and usable satellite images. The maps made from these 2 years (1978 and 2005) also served as a reference in the QGIS software, to predict the land cover in 2040 and 2080. The 2020 map was used to validate the one simulated for the same year from the two previous ones (1978 and 2005 maps) since any prediction from a model requires calibration and validation of the said model. Similarly, the reliability of a model's outputs depends on the validation results of the model in question.