Sierra Leone
How does Sierra Leone’s trade profile look? Level of exports and imports over thirty years, structural composition, partner concentration, and the position on the economic-complexity frontier.
where Sierra Leone is exposed
- Plastic household and toilet articles (392490): imports 87% from United States.
Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure.
Model a supply shock → - Other rubber/plastic footwear not covering the ankle (640299): imports 95% from China.
Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure.
Model a supply shock → - Ceramic flooring blocks, supports or filler tiles and the like (excluding building bricks) (690490): imports 100% from China.
Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure.
Model a supply shock → - Telephones for cellular networks or for other wireless networks (851712): imports 65% from United Arab Emirates.
Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure.
Model a supply shock → - Printed textured-polyester fabric (540754): imports 100% from China.
Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure.
Model a supply shock →
where Sierra Leone could grow
- Steel, alloy: flat-rolled, width less than 600mm, n.e.s. in heading no. 7226, hot-rolled (722691): proximity 0.02 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.97, world market $818.0m.
Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024).
See product → - Kraft paper and paperboard: uniformly bleached throughout, coated with inorganic substances, more than 95% of chemically processed wood fibres, weight 150g/m2 or less, for non-graphic purposes, in rolls or sheets (481031): proximity 0.03 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.83, world market $224.5m.
Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024).
See product → - Steel, alloy: flat-rolled, width less than 600mm, of silicon-electrical steel, other than grain-oriented (722619): proximity 0.03 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.66, world market $607.6m.
Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024).
See product → - Material-removal machine-tool parts and accessories (846693): proximity 0.04 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.23, world market $6.9bn.
Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024).
See product → - Interchangeable drilling tools, excluding rock drills (820750): proximity 0.03 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.57, world market $4.7bn.
Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024).
See product →
Sierra Leone trade-riskStored risk rank #24 of 185 (board)
Dependency diagnosis
- Plastic household and toilet articles (392490): you import 87.3% from United States. STRUCTURAL
Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.36. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: CHN 59.6%, DEU 3.5%, POL 3.2%, MEX 2.7%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production. - Other rubber/plastic footwear not covering the ankle (640299): you import 95.2% from China. STRUCTURAL
Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.32. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: VNM 17.8%, IDN 5.9%, DEU 4.1%, ITA 2.2%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production. - Ceramic flooring blocks, supports or filler tiles and the like (excluding building bricks) (690490): you import 99.8% from China. STRUCTURAL
Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.48. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: DEU 5.9%, MOZ 3.5%, ITA 2.3%, ESP 2.2%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production. - Telephones for cellular networks or for other wireless networks (851712): you import 65.4% from United Arab Emirates. UNKNOWN
World concentration unavailable for this product code. - Printed textured-polyester fabric (540754): you import 100.0% from China. STRUCTURAL
Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.76. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: IND 4.4%, ITA 2.1%, S19 1.0%, PAK 0.5%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production. - Luggage and cases with plastic or textile exteriors (420212): you import 99.6% from China. STRUCTURAL
Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.50. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: FRA 3.0%, THA 3.0%, IDN 2.2%, BEL 2.1%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production. - Other electric lamps and light fittings (940540): you import 65.5% from China. STRUCTURAL
Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.40. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: DEU 5.2%, ITA 2.8%, MEX 2.8%, USA 2.5%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production. - Plastic tableware and kitchenware (392410): you import 86.5% from China. STRUCTURAL
Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.39. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: TUR 3.0%, DEU 2.5%, USA 2.4%, S19 2.2%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
GeoDep 2022, world shares latest BACI year, Pink Sheet 2026M04. Price coverage requires quotes in that month and the same month a year earlier; discontinued and lagging series are excluded. No real-time signal is implied.
Sierra Leone: merchandise exports and imports, 1996-2024
Exports grew from $198.7M in 1996 to $1.5B in 2024, a CAGR of 7.5%. The merchandise balance sits at -$560.9M, which is -37% of exports , a simple scale normalisation over the available BACI series. Both exports and imports use reconciled f.o.b. values: CEPII removes estimated freight and insurance costs from import reports before reconciliation. This BACI balance is not a c.i.f.–f.o.b. gap. The more conventional open-economy metric is the current- account balance as % of GDP, reported on the
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), country export and import totals from reconciled f.o.b. bilateral flows./macro/SLE page.Query
SELECT year,
SUM(total_exports)*1000 AS exports_usd,
SUM(total_imports)*1000 AS imports_usd,
(SUM(total_exports)-SUM(total_imports))*1000 AS balance_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_totals.parquet'
WHERE country_code IN (694)
GROUP BY year ORDER BY year;Trade balance, 1996-2024
Export composition
The structural change in what a country exports, from agriculture to manufactures to services, or between HS sections, is one of the most studied transitions in development economics (Imbs & Wacziarg 2003; Hausmann, Hwang & Rodrik 2007). The chart below shows the five largest HS sections of Sierra Leone’s exports in 2024, plotted back thirty years.
Top-5 HS sections of exports, 1996-2024
In 2024, the top three HS sections account for 89% of merchandise exports that map to a HS96 section, a rough measure of sectoral concentration at the coarsest classification level. Shares here are over BACI exports that carry a valid HS96 section mapping, so the five-section series does not sum to 100% of total exports: some HS6 codes (newer HS revisions, non-standard codes) fall outside the 21-section mapping. Note that the top-5 sections are selected by 2024 share, so a section that was dominant in 1996 but has since fallen out of the top 5 will not appear on the chart.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01) crossed with HS96 section codes. Shares are over the HS6-mapped universe; HS6 codes without an HS92 section fall outside the 21-section totals.Export basket by HS chapter, 2024 · top-30 $1.5B of $1.5B total
Cell area is proportional to 2024 export value. The treemap shows the top 30 HS chapters (HS2 level) of Sierra Leone’s exports; cells are colour-coded by HS section so structurally related chapters share a hue (e.g. minerals, machinery, textiles). The largest chapter, HS 26 , Ores, slag and ash, represents 72.8% of the top-30chapter total shown. Compared to Figure 2’s five-section trajectory, this view exposes which specific chapters within the dominant sections drive the overall composition.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), f.o.b. exports of HS6 codes aggregated to HS2 chapters, 2024. Restricted to top 30 chapters by value.Query
SELECT SUBSTRING(product_code, 1, 2) AS chapter_code,
ANY_VALUE(p.chapter) AS chapter_name,
p.section,
SUM(cyp.export_value) * 1000 AS value_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_product/year=2024/*.parquet' cyp
JOIN products p ON p.code = cyp.product_code
WHERE cyp.country_code IN (694) AND cyp.export_value > 0 AND p.section IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY chapter_code, p.section
ORDER BY value_usd DESC LIMIT 30;Import basket by HS chapter, 2024 · top-30 $1.9B of $2.1B total
Cell area is proportional to 2024 import value. The treemap shows the top 30 HS chapters (HS2 level) of Sierra Leone’s imports; cells are colour-coded by HS section so structurally related chapters share a hue. The largest import chapter, HS 84 , Machinery and mechanical appliances, boilers, nuclear reactors; parts thereof, represents 12.8% of the top-30 chapter total shown. Read alongside Figure 2b to compare what Sierra Leone sells abroad against what it buys in.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), reconciled f.o.b. imports of HS6 codes aggregated to HS2 chapters, 2024. Restricted to top 30 chapters by value.Query
SELECT SUBSTRING(product_code, 1, 2) AS chapter_code,
ANY_VALUE(p.chapter) AS chapter_name,
p.section,
SUM(cyp.import_value) * 1000 AS value_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_product/year=2024/*.parquet' cyp
JOIN products p ON p.code = cyp.product_code
WHERE cyp.country_code IN (694) AND cyp.import_value > 0 AND p.section IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY chapter_code, p.section
ORDER BY value_usd DESC LIMIT 30;Who it sells to
World map of export destinations, 2024
Each country is shaded by the bilateral value of Sierra Leone’s exports to it in 2024, binned into quintiles. Sierra Leone itself is tinted in amber as the origin; white indicates destinations with no recorded bilateral flow. The map makes regional dependency structures visible, neighbours, former colonial ties, bloc partners, in ways a top-list ordering hides.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), bilateral exports 2024. Geometry: world-atlas 110m.Top 12 export destinations, 2024
Partner concentration measures market exposure. The single largest destination absorbs 63% of Sierra Leone’s exports; the top 3 together take 78%. Concentrated partner bases make bilateral shocks (trade wars, recessions) first-order.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), bilateral exports 2024. Shares are over total exports.What moved exports between years
The line charts above show levels over time; they do not answer the analyst’s next question: when exports changed between 2023 and 2024, which partners and which products accounted for how much of it? The two bridge charts below answer that directly. Contributors are ordered by absolute dollar change, largest first, and every line outside the top 8 is collapsed into one residual bar so the columns still sum exactly to the total move.
Partners
Figure 3c. Export change by partner, 2023-2024
Exports moved from $1.6B to $1.5B (−$46.6M).
Scroll horizontally to view the full chart.
Year totalsIncrease on continuing linesEntry from zeroExit to zero / declineAll other residual
Products
Figure 3d. Export change by product, 2023-2024
Exports moved from $1.6B to $1.5B (−$46.6M).
Scroll horizontally to view the full chart.
Year totalsIncrease on continuing linesEntry from zeroExit to zero / declineAll other residual
Economic complexity
The Economic Complexity Index (ECI), building on Hidalgo & Hausmann (2009, PNAS) and formalized as the eigenvalue (second-eigenvector) index in the Atlas of Economic Complexity, ranks countries by the productive knowledge embedded in their export basket. Countries that export many products, and whose products are also exported by few others, score high. ECI is predictive of subsequent income growth and structural transformation; see Hausmann et al. (2014, The Atlas of Economic Complexity, MIT Press) for the full methodology and the comparative country atlas. For a non-linear alternative that ranks fast-diversifying economies differently (China, for instance, sits far higher on fitness than on ECI), compare the Economic Fitness metric of Tacchella et al. (2012).
Sierra Leone: ECI trajectory, 1996-2024
Current ECI: 0.11, ranked #108 of 226 economies in 2024. ECI is zero-centered; positive values mean above-median complexity.
Method: ECI = second eigenvector of the reflections matrix on the BACI RCA≥1 matrix, z-standardized (eigenvalue method of the Atlas of Economic Complexity, Hausmann et al. 2014). Framework: Hidalgo & Hausmann (2009) “The Building Blocks of Economic Complexity,” PNAS 106(26): 10570-10575, whose method of reflections is equivalent to the eigenvector form (Mealy, Farmer & Teytelboym 2019, Science Advances).Export concentration (HHI) and product count, 1996-2024
2024 HHI = 0.325, equivalent to about 3.1 equally-sized product lines.Sierra Leone exports 1,397 distinct HS6 products. Rising HHI or falling effective-N indicates loss of diversification.
Method: HHI = Σ sᵢ² over HS6 export shares. Adelman (1969).Effective number of exported products (1/HHI)
Niche leadership
Revealed comparative advantage (Balassa 1965) says a country is specialised in a product when its share of that product’s world exports exceeds the country’s share of all world exports. A stronger version asks: which HS6 lines does the country lead the world in? The table below lists the ten largest export lines (by value) where Sierra Leone ranks in the world top-5 in 2024, restricted to products with at least US$10M of global trade so tiny niches don’t crowd out economically meaningful positions. This is the “niche leadership” view: products the country is not just diversified in, but competitive at the frontier.
Sierra Leone: top 10 HS6 lines with world top-5 rank, 2024
Sierra Leone holds a top-5 world-export position in 1of its largest export lines (HS6 products with ≥ US$10M world trade, 2024). The leading niche is HS 261400 , Titanium ores and concentrates , where it ranks #5 globally with 4.8% of world exports. Dominant niches are the revealed-comparative-advantage anchors a trade-shock or industrial- policy analysis should start from.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), HS6 exporter rankings, 2024. Restricted to products with ≥ US$10M world trade. Method: Balassa (1965) RCA taken to its rank-based extreme, top-5 world rank is a stringent specialisation test.Query
WITH prod_year AS (
SELECT product_code, country_code, SUM(export_value) AS v
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_product/year=2024/*.parquet'
WHERE export_value > 0 GROUP BY product_code, country_code
), ranked AS (
SELECT product_code, country_code, v,
RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY product_code ORDER BY v DESC) AS world_rank
FROM prod_year
WHERE product_code IN (SELECT product_code FROM prod_year GROUP BY product_code HAVING SUM(v)*1000 >= 1e7)
)
SELECT product_code, v*1000 AS value_usd, world_rank
FROM ranked WHERE country_code IN (694) AND world_rank <= 5
ORDER BY v DESC LIMIT 10;Peer countries by structural profile
Which economies share the closest structural profile to Sierra Leone? Each country is placed in a three-dimensional space of economic complexity (ECI), log GDP per capita, and log total exports, each standardised to zero mean and unit variance in 2024. The five nearest neighbours by Euclidean distance in that space are Sierra Leone’s closest structural peers, similar on productive-capability, income level, and scale of external trade. This is a trade-specific adaptation of the synthetic-control “donor pool” logic (Abadie, Diamond & Hainmueller 2010).
Sierra Leone: five closest structural peers, 2024
Closest structural peer: Niger (ECI -0.51, GDP-pc $735, exports $1.6B). Bar length encodes peer proximity in the standardised (ECI, log GDP-pc, log exports) space, shorter bars are closer structural matches. This is the peer set to benchmark trade-policy outcomes against, rather than regional or income-group aggregates. The metric matches on capability frontier and scale, not on sector mix, so countries with similar export composition but different ECI (e.g. higher-complexity apparel exporters) will not appear here.
Method: z-score each dimension (ECI, log GDP-pc, log total exports) across the universe of countries with all three observations in the latest year; rank by Euclidean distance. Abadie, Diamond & Hainmueller (2010) “Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies,” JASA 105(490): 493-505.Margins of export growth
Hummels & Klenow (2005, “The variety and quality of a nation’s exports,” American Economic Review95(3): 704-723) introduced the split of a country’s exports into an extensive margin (the set of goods it ships) and an intensive margin (how much of each). In their own measure the extensive margin is nota raw line count: following Feenstra (1994), each category is weighted by its importance in world trade. The figure below applies a simplified, count-based version of that distinction to one country’s export growth over time, so the levels are a proxy, not the Feenstra-weighted index. The two margins still respond to different levers: trade-cost reductions and discovery push the extensive margin (Melitz 2003), while productivity and demand push the intensive.
Margins of export growth, 2014-2024
Over 10 years, total exports grew at -4.9%/yr. Decomposition: HS6 line count moved from 1,561 to 1,397 (extensive margin -1.1%/yr); average value per line moved from $1.6M to $1.1M (intensive margin -3.8%/yr). The intensive margin dominates, which under the extensive/intensive logic indicates growth via deepening sales of existing lines (productivity, scale, or quality).
Method: simplified count-based margin decomposition. The extensive/intensive distinction is from Hummels & Klenow (2005) AER 95(3): 704-723, whose own extensive margin is Feenstra (1994) world-trade-weighted, not a line count. Here, extensive margin = CAGR of distinct HS6 export lines; intensive margin = CAGR of (total exports / line count); total CAGR ≈ extensive + intensive (log-linear approximation).Query
WITH totals AS ( SELECT year, SUM(total_exports)*1000 AS exports_usd FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_totals.parquet' WHERE country_code IN (694) GROUP BY year ) SELECT h.year, h.num_products, t.exports_usd FROM 'data/parquet/country_hhi.parquet' h JOIN totals t USING(year) WHERE h.country_code = 694 AND h.year IN (2014, 2024);
Export basket on the complexity frontier
Sierra Leone: export value vs. product complexity (PCI), 2024
Each dot is one HS6 product in Sierra Leone’s basket with more than US$1M in exports in 2024 (long-tail marginal exports below that floor are filtered out so the scatter is legible; the filter drops many HS6 codes for small economies and few for large ones). Horizontal = export value (log), vertical = Product Complexity Index (PCI). Dots upper-right are high-value, high-complexity products (machinery, precision instruments). Lower-left products carry less productive knowledge per dollar. A basket shifted toward the upper-right correlates with higher ECI and higher income.
Method: PCI = product loadings from the second-eigenvector complexity decomposition of the country-product RCA matrix (eigenvalue method of the Atlas of Economic Complexity, Hausmann et al. 2014; framework from Hidalgo & Hausmann 2009, PNAS; eigenvector form equivalent to the method of reflections, Mealy et al. 2019). Basket restricted to HS6 exports > US$1M in the latest year.Related
- Value-chain position, domestic vs foreign value added in Sierra Leone’s exports, VAX ratio, and upstream/downstream index (OECD TiVA)
- Economic Fitness, the non-linear Tacchella-Pietronero complexity ranking, and how it diverges from ECI
- Research index, analytical pieces grounded in BACI flows and gravity covariates
- Sector monitor, quarterly deep dives on 12 HS-defined sectors
- Compare Sierra Leone against peer economies
- Exporter profile, basket composition, RCA, and partners