Changes in rainfall patterns and extreme wet and dry events are more frequent and will intensify globally because of global warming disrupting the water cycle (Rohde, 2023). This is particularly the case in Southern Africa with an increasing intensity and frequency of rainfall extremes. These events often lead to water stresses ranging from droughts to waterlogging, which may adversely impact the soil-crop processes (Kim et al., 2024) and reduce crop productivity and nutrient use efficiency. However, studies using rainfall manipulation experiments remain scarce. Most of such existing experiments have been conducted on natural ecosystems such as grasslands and woodlands in the northern temperate regions, with a clear gap on croplands in the tropics and poor focus on interactions with nutrient cycling (Beier et al., 2012). To better understand the soil-crop nitrogen (N) dynamics under rainfall extremes, a field- scale rainfall manipulation experiment has been carried out in 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 cropping seasons in Harare, Zimbabwe (17°42'13.5"S 31°00'29.4"E) under sub-humid conditions. This is a part of a large 1.5 ha new long-term experiment established since November 2022 and registered within the Global Long-Term Agricultural Experiment Network (https://glten.org/experiments/368). Three main rainfall treatments replicated three times were established: reduced rainfall (-30%), normal rainfall and heavy rainfall (events of 100 mm/24h). The reduced rainfall treatment is achieved with an exclusion system above the maize canopy using transparent shelters covering about 30% of the plots surface. The heavy rainfall events are simulated with an irrigation system, and two events are applied per cropping season. Within these rainfall treatments, the study focused on four cropping systems treatments, resulting from the combination of two N fertilization levels (0 and 80 kg N ha-1 yr-1), with or without mulching (0 and 6 t DM ha-1 yr- 1). A bare soil treatment was also set