africa_dashboard.json…Can't load data file
This dashboard fetches its data from a JSON file alongside it. Browsers block local-file reads for security, so serve the folder with a one-line HTTP server.
- Open a terminal in the Dashboard/ folder.
- Run:
python -m http.server 8000 - Open:
http://localhost:8000/dashboard.html
The shortlist at a glance
Every bubble is one African country. The horizontal axis is how attractiveAttractiveness — what feeds the scoreFood market size — total food & ag imports, latest year (UN Comtrade, HS 01–24).Untapped export potential — gravity-modelled export gap above current exports (ITC Export Potential Map).Population scale — total population as a proxy for consumer base (World Bank WDI).Real GDP growth — most recent annual growth rate (IMF WEO).Agriculture share of GDP — how central ag is to the economy (World Bank WDI). the market is. The vertical axis is how feasibleFeasibility — what feeds the scoreGovernance — average of five WGI indicators excluding political stability (rule of law, control of corruption, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, voice & accountability).Political stability — WGI Political Stability and Absence of Violence, scored separately.Macro stability — average of inverted inflation, inverted government debt, and fiscal balance (IMF).Business & regulatory climate — World Bank B-READY 2025 three-pillar composite, with CPIA fallback for missing countries.Infrastructure & logistics — average of AIDI overall (AfDB) and LSCI Q1 2026 (UNCTAD); AIDI alone for landlocked countries.Capital openness — FDI net inflows as a share of GDP (World Bank WDI). it is to operate there. Bigger bubbles mean a bigger total prize — food imports plus untapped export potential, in absolute dollars (bubble area is proportional to opportunity, so a market 4× the size shows 4× the area). Top-right is the shortlist.
Score floor
A country is excluded only when both attractiveness and feasibility are below their floor. Strong on either axis keeps it in.Attractiveness vs Feasibility — the map
Eligible countries are in teal; the ones the filter excluded are still on the chart in grey, so you can see the whole field at once. Hover any bubble for scores and total prize size.
Top 10 — the shortlist
Ranked by the combined score: half attractiveness, half feasibility. Click a row to open that country's profile.
Excluded for now
Countries the macro and security filter currently rules out, with the reason. Loosen the filter above to bring any of them back in.
Country profile
One country in depth. Use the tabs below to jump straight to what you care about — macro, trade, production, the operating environment, or where to actually invest.
The country at a glance
A 30-second read — the macro vitals, what the headline scores rest on, and the wider structural picture.
What feeds Attractiveness & Feasibility
The eleven ingredients behind the two headline scores — five for Attractiveness, six for Feasibility — each on a 0–100 scale against the 54-country African peer set.
Macro & structural snapshot
Background numbers that shape any thesis — economic structure, demand pull, external buffers. Latest available year per indicator.
What the country buys and sells
The food & ag flows in and out, broken down by chapter and by product, plus how much export upside is still on the table.
Imports vs exports — by HS2 chapter
Imports go left, exports go right. Where the bars are heavy on one side, that's where the structural opportunity sits.
Untapped export potential — by HS2 chapter
Green is what the country actually exports. Orange is the modelled five-year forward potential not yet captured. The bigger the orange bar, the more headroom.
Imports vs exports — by HS4 product
The same flows at four-digit product granularity — a sharper picture of where the volume actually concentrates. Filter by HS2 chapter to drill in.
Untapped export potential — by HS4 product
Where the export gap concentrates at the product level. The biggest orange bars are the most actionable line items. Filter by chapter to focus.
What the country grows and how well it feeds itself
The supply base on the ground, and how much of its own demand the country can meet from local production.
What the country actually grows and raises
Crops and livestock as a supply base. Sort by tonnage for volume staples (cassava, yams) or by farmgate value for cash crops (cocoa, coffee, cashew). Filter by HS chapter to drill in.
How well the country feeds itself — by category
Domestic production ÷ domestic supply, by FAO food category. Bars past 100% = surplus (export angle); below 100% = import gap (substitution angle).
What it takes to run a business here
Governance, political risk, business climate, and infrastructure — each ranked against the 54-country African peer set.
Governance profile
The six Worldwide Governance Indicators on the standard −2.5 (worst) to +2.5 (best) scale. The further out the shape, the better.
Recent conflict activity
Armed conflict (Battles) and insurgency (Explosions/Remote violence + Violence against civilians) in the last 12 months. Risk tier reflects absolute event count: Low ≤50 · Moderate 51–200 · Elevated 201–800 · High 800+.
How the country compares to its peers
Higher is better across every tile. Ranks are within the 54-country African peer set.
Top sectors to invest in
A ranked shortlist of the food & ag sectors most worth pursuing in this country — each row tagged with its strategic angle, the absolute dollar size of the opportunity, and a composite investability score. The chart's x-axis is production readiness: a 0–100 rating of how strong the country's existing supply base is for that sector versus its other food & ag chapters (higher = bigger producer relative to the country's own portfolio). The y-axis is total commercial scale: imports + current exports + untapped export gap — the full addressable-dollar size of the sector in this country, log-scaled.
The sector synthesis
Each row is one HS sector in this country. Four numbers — imports, exports, production, untapped export gap — combine into a score and a strategic angle. The score is normalized within this country, so it ranks priorities for this market; for cross-country deal sizing in absolute USD, use the Import Substitution and Export Expansion tabs.
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Plug the leak — country imports a lot of this AND already produces some. Substitute imports with local supply.
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Build the base — country imports a lot but doesn't produce it locally. Greenfield production play.
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Scale the win — country has a real production base AND meaningful exports (current or untapped). Back the exporter.
The Size column reflects absolute USD scale: Large ≥ $500M · Medium $100M–$500M · Small < $100M.
Opportunities — ranked across all countries
Every tagged sector–country pair, sorted by absolute commercial scale in USD (imports + exports + EPM gap). Unlike the per-country synthesis (which uses within-country log-ranks for relative prioritization), this view compares dollar opportunities head-to-head across the continent. Filter by country, product, size, or strategic angle to drill into the cross-country shortlist.
Filters
Only gate-eligible countries are included. Adjust the floor on the Overview tab. BalancedCross-country opportunity table
Each row is one sector in one country. Ranked by total commercial scale (imports + exports + EPM gap). Click any row to open that country's profile.
Food Security Pillar — the investment thesis
The dashboard answers where the dollar opportunities are. This page is the lens — vision, filters, system map, and worked examples that decide what enters the pipeline.
What we're building
Integrated production and processing platforms — export-led and import-substituting — that control value-chain bottlenecks and maximize value addition of available resources rather than exporting them raw.
The eight filters
Pass all eight to enter the pipeline. Fail any to exit. These are filters, not aspirations.
- Comparative advantage is the entry test. An existing base, a cluster, buyer adjacency, or raw inputs paired with proven demand. We build from zero only when both inputs and demand are already there — never from thin air.
- Systemic integration. No isolated investments. Every project must feed, unlock, or de-risk another asset in the portfolio. Example: soybean production → edible oil for consumers + meal for poultry, aquaculture, and dairy platforms.
- Control the bottlenecks. Own the chokepoints that serve multiple sectors at once: inputs (fertilizer, seed), storage (silos), cold chain, logistics corridors, certification. Bottleneck control is where margin and leverage sit.
- Maximize value addition. The opportunity is rarely "produce more." It is processing, branding, certification, by-product monetization. We move up the margin stack.
- Reduce loss before adding capacity. Post-harvest losses, idle mills, uncertified output, and raw exports are larger margins than greenfield production. Utilization and waste-to-value are first-wave plays, not afterthoughts.
- Both routes count: import substitution and export-led. A project clears on either lens — including export-from-day-one plays (cocoa butter, leather, horticulture) when raw-input strength is there.
- Food–Water–Energy nexus is underwriting discipline. Water and energy must be answered — at price, at scale, reliably — before entry. They live in the financial model, not the sustainability report.
- Blended finance de-risks the system, not weak economics. Concessional capital absorbs systemic risk — climate, shared infrastructure, smallholder aggregation, certification. The core operating asset must remain commercial and profitable on its own.
What feeds what
Five sub-systems, connected by shared feedstock, by-products, and logistics. Every investment must plug into at least one flow on this map.
Click image to expand · ESC to close
Five chains, in practice
Five sub-system packages (A–E) plus a certification deep-dive. Verified numbers, named countries, system links woven in. Drawn from a structured review of 300+ AfDB, IFPRI, World Bank, IMF, and AFRIXM publications.
Input engine — fertilizer, seed, irrigation
- Fertilizer
- The gap. Africa imports $8.8B/yr of fertilizer (2023). Production sits in North Africa; the rest of the continent imports, especially nitrogen and potash. Continental application averages just 22 kg/ha vs. 135 kg/ha globally — closing that gap implies SSA needs roughly 8× its current fertilizer use (McKinsey).
- Where production is, and where to build. 97% of African phosphate reserves are in four North African countries — 🇲🇦 Morocco (OCP, vertically integrated from mine to fertilizer), 🇪🇬 Egypt (also nitrogen), 🇹🇳 Tunisia, 🇩🇿 Algeria. Two paths: scale up there, or build greenfield where SSA reserves sit — 🇨🇬 R. Congo (Hinda phosphate + Kola potash), 🇳🇦 Namibia (Sandpiper), 🇿🇦 South Africa (PQ Phosphate). Potash is the biggest whitespace: 0 active mines on the continent, 100% imported.
- Distribution is half-built. Intra-African fertilizer share rose 24% → 36% in a decade, but transport adds 45% to retail (Mombasa → Kigali costs $160/tonne) and middlemen on top of weak agro-dealer networks pile on extra markups — pricing fertilizer out of smallholder reach. North African producers still find it easier to export globally than to sell within Africa.
- Seed
- The gap. West & Central Africa still run on informal farmer-to-farmer seed exchange — formal certified seed barely reaches the field. Result: poor variety, low yields. The continent needs ~6× more improved seed.
- 🇪🇹 Ethiopia case — heat-tolerant wheat. Ethiopia imports $600M+ of wheat a year because traditional varieties only grow in cool highlands. The AfDB's Climate Resilient Wheat Value Chain Project deploys heat-tolerant seed + irrigation, letting wheat grow in hotter lowland areas that were previously unsuited. Targets: 2.3M farmers, output 6.7M → 8.2M tonnes/yr, imports −20%.
- Replicable model. 🇳🇬 Nigeria's "Seeds for the Future" (Olam Agri + LCRI + ICARDA, the dry-area crop research centre) is developing heat-tolerant wheat on the same public-private template.
Oilseed → feed → protein — soy / sunflower crushing, feed milling, poultry, aquaculture, dairy
- The gap
- Africa can't grow its protein supply without feed. Poultry, fish, and dairy all hit the same wall — not enough soybean meal. Nigeria alone has a 1.6M-tonne soybean deficit (2.2M tonnes demanded, under 600K produced — meeting only ~27% of domestic demand). Existing processing capacity sits at ~50% utilisation because the raw beans aren't there. The biggest buyers of imported soybean meal are 🇪🇬 Egypt, 🇩🇿 Algeria, 🇲🇦 Morocco, and 🇹🇳 Tunisia.
- One crushing plant unlocks three protein chains. Soybean meal makes up 20–30% of chicken feed and 20% of fish feed (NIRSAL 2022). A single soybean crusher produces edible oil for consumers and meal for poultry, fish, and dairy. Without a feed mill in the middle, none of them can scale. Demand is structural: the global soybean-food market is projected to grow from $44.7B (2021) to $60.7B (2027), and Africa's own poultry and aquaculture sectors are the fastest-growing sources of pull on the continent.
- The play
- 🇲🇿 Mozambique — the design template. Mozambique imports about $700M of food a year. The AfDB-backed national poultry programme is designed to fund hatcheries + slaughterhouses + cold storage at the same time, so each layer passes its output to the next — chicks grow into birds, birds get processed, meat reaches market fresh. The plan targets broiler output from 2M → 6M birds/yr. Read this as the build-it-together blueprint — outcomes still pending delivery.
- 🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire — what happens when one layer is missing. Quality feed is the single biggest missing link in African aquaculture — flagged across Egypt, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa. Without a feed mill, fish farms can't compete with imports: Côte d'Ivoire's fish imports more than doubled in six years, $389M (2015) → $793M (2021).
Premium crop processing — cocoa, coffee, tea, cashew, groundnut, tomato paste
- The gap
- Africa grows the crop, others capture the margin. Africa grows 75% of global cocoa but receives only 2% of the $100B annual chocolate market (World Bank). Put differently: Africa produces 70% of raw cocoa beans but only 16% of intermediate cocoa products — and intermediate products sell at 2–3× the price per tonne of raw beans (AfDB).
- Same pattern across the chapter. Coffee, tea, cashew, groundnut, and tomato all leave Africa raw or under-processed. Owning the next step — washing, roasting, grinding, shelling, paste — is where the price multiplies.
- The play
- 🇬🇭 Ghana cocoa — rehab the farms and own the processing. About one-quarter of Ghana's 2M cocoa hectares are over 40 years old with sharply lower yields. The government's Productivity Enhancement Programme has rehabilitated 67,000 hectares so far — less than 15% of the ageing land. Meanwhile a global cocoa supply deficit of 374,000 tonnes (2023/24) is keeping prices high. The integrated play: farm rehab + a grinding/butter/powder plant + certification to clear premium markets.
- 🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire — the model already running. The world's largest cocoa producer has moved past raw beans into industrial cocoa paste and cocoa butter exports. AfCFTA's zero-tariff regime is opening intra-African chocolate-ingredient flows that previously bypassed the continent.
- 🇳🇬 Nigeria — same logic, different crops. Groundnut: Nigeria is the 4th-largest producer globally but only the 63rd-largest exporter — the binding gate is aflatoxin contamination and a supply chain crowded with middlemen. Tomato: Nigeria is the 14th-largest tomato producer worldwide (2nd in Africa) yet the 13th-largest importer of tomato paste (3rd in Africa). The Tomato Jos benchmark shows a vertically-integrated production-and-processing model can replace those imports.
Livestock by-product — tanning, leather finishing, gelatine, industrial proteins, blood meal
- The gap
- Hides leave Africa raw; the leather margin is captured elsewhere. Tanning, finishing, and cutting — the steps that turn a hide into a car-seat cover, a shoe, or a handbag — happen overseas.
- The play
- The asset base is huge. 🇸🇩 Sudan alone runs a livestock population of ~110 million animals, with Gulf veterinary buyers next door — but most of the herd serves only the meat line; hides and by-products leave raw or go to waste.
- 🇧🇼 Botswana — one animal, four outputs. Botswana's beef sector already holds an EU export quota, meaning its slaughter operations run to European specification — and the same cattle line yields premium hides as a by-product. The play: keep the value at home (hide collection → tannery → finishing plant → cut leather), with cut leather feeding 🇿🇦 South Africa's automotive seating industry (one of Africa's largest manufacturing demand-pulls) and consumer goods (shoes, belts, bags, jackets). One animal, four outputs: meat (EU quota), cut leather (SA auto), blood meal (back to B's feed mills), limed splits (forward to gelatine, picked up below).
- 🇪🇬 Egypt's Robbiki Eco-Leather Park — concentration as a multiplier. 660 ha concentrating 154 tanneries already operating. Gelita AG (a global gelatine leader) has committed to its first Egyptian gelatine plant inside the park, sourcing limed splits and trimmings directly from co-located operators — the same playbook as Botswana, concentrated inside one footprint, with MENA's largest pharma and food market next door as the immediate demand pull.
Cold chain & corridors — silos, cold rooms, ports, certification, trade finance
- The gap
- Most African food spoils before it reaches the buyer. Fewer than 10% of African perishables benefit from a cold chain today; post-harvest losses run 30–45% for fruits, vegetables, dairy, fish, and cereals. In Northern Nigeria, up to 30% of the sorghum harvest is lost to spoilage. Kenya's potato chain has under 2% cold-storage adoption (30–40% losses). South Africa's Garden Route — 300 km of fruit-growing land — has zero dedicated cold storage.
- Saving a tonne is cheaper than growing one. Airtight silos cut Nigerian sorghum loss from 30% to 2%. ColdHubs (Nigeria) solar cold rooms demonstrate 50%+ spoilage reduction at pilot sites. The investment maths usually favours loss-reduction before new production.
- The play
- 🇳🇬 Nigeria — fix the storage gap first. Around 475,000 MT of government silo capacity sits unused or non-functional; the strategic grain reserve runs at 7.6% of the minimum required for food security. The Yobe State on-farm silo cluster (~$24.3M initial cost) saves an estimated 30,800 MT of grain a year at a value of ~$12.3M/yr — generating a 5-year NPV of $28.98M and an ROI of ~19% on recovered grain alone, before any processing margin. The same logic extends to other commodities: tomato post-harvest losses in Kano state are reported at over 50% for lack of basic preservation and transport equipment.
- Corridors carry every chain to market.
- 🇩🇯 Djibouti port — traffic +31.4% YoY, trans-shipment +239.5% (H2 2024); primary gateway for Ethiopian and East African perishables.
- 🇿🇦 Cape Town — South Africa's primary fruit-export gateway.
- Lobito Corridor — open-access transcontinental rail linking Zambia, DRC, Angola to the Atlantic.
- Abidjan–Lagos — integrated cold-chain pilots show 16–25% logistics cost reduction.
- The market size is real. The continental cold-chain market is projected at $14.9B by 2029 (~8.3% CAGR).
Quality infrastructure — accredited labs, phytosanitary certification, food-safety inspection, traceability
- The gap
- Without an accredited test, the shipment doesn't clear the border. 🇸🇳 Senegal mandates folic acid fortification in wheat flour, but no laboratory in the country can test for it — samples are shipped to Switzerland. The national reference lab (LANAC) has expired accreditation for vitamin A and iodine. Every miller, oil refiner, and salt producer operates against a regulatory test it cannot run at home.
- The continental gap is structural. 22 of 54 African countries have minimal or no national quality infrastructure for food safety; 130,000 people/year are affected by food-borne illness.
- The play
- 🇰🇪 KEPHIS — the proven model. Kenya's $1B+ annual horticulture exports (60M+ flower stems/day to 70+ destinations) do not exist without the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service. The World Bank's 2026 Africa Economic Update is explicit: the critical investment that enabled Kenya's export rise was not EU market access — it was KEPHIS's phytosanitary certification, inspection capacity, and accredited testing labs, built through sustained investment across the 1990s and 2000s. Quality infrastructure preceded the export boom; it was the cause, not the consequence.
- 🇨🇲 Cameroon — replication starting. Douala phytosanitary certification labs are now issuing EU-recognised certification locally — exporters no longer ship samples overseas to clear EU requirements.
- The institutional opening. The Africa Food Safety Agency is being stood up under CAADP Strategy 2026–2035, with private-sector engagement in SPS explicitly invited — opening commercial accreditation, lab operation, and inspection-as-a-service models. China's 2025 Zero-Tariff Policy for all 53 African nations adds a parallel pull: zero-tariff access is conditional on meeting Chinese quality and certification standards, so the certification asset is what actually converts policy access into shipped tonnage.
- The lab is the gate to every other chain. Cold chain (E) is wasted on uncertified product. Cocoa butter (C) cannot enter premium markets without traceability. Tannery output (D) cannot enter EU leather goods without REACH-compliant testing. Groundnut, maize, sorghum, and cocoa clear premium tiers only when aflatoxin is brought below EU/US limits — the role of biocontrol like Aflasafe (developed by IITA).
How DFIs change your IRR
Every worked example above assumes someone wrote the first cheque. Five concrete things the African Development Bank (AfDB), Afreximbank, AGRA, the African Guarantee Fund, and their peers actually do — none of it is charity, all of it changes your IRR, your downside, or your time-to-close.
Take the first hit if it goes wrong
A commercial bank in Lagos or Accra will not lend to a feed mill at less than 25%. Agriculture is "high-risk" — they price the fear, not the project. A risk-sharing facility changes the maths: the development institution promises to pay the bank back if you default, typically absorbing the first 30–50% of any loss. The bank now has most of its downside covered, and re-prices the loan accordingly.
The named instruments running this today: NIRSAL in Nigeria (the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending facility, operating since 2013), GIRSAL in Ghana (its sister system), and the continental African Guarantee Fund backed by AfDB, Denmark, Spain, and France. All three of them stand between you and your lender.
Long money at low rates
A feed mill, a cocoa-grinding plant, or a cold-chain corridor pays back over 12–20 years, not 3–5. No commercial bank in Africa will write that ticket. The African Development Bank does — through its concessional window, the African Development Fund (ADF): 15–25 year tickets at 2–5% interest, in a market where commercial credit costs 10–30%. The ADF Food Security packages for Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Sierra Leone are senior debt on exactly these terms.
Be the first money in, so the rest follows
Most private capital will not enter a frontier agri deal alone. The development bank signs first — takes the cornerstone equity or senior debt position — and signals to private investors that the diligence has been done. The proof is on this very page:
- $94M from AfDB anchored Ethiopia's wheat turnaround (Climate-Resilient Wheat Value Chain programme).
- $105M from AfDB anchored Mozambique's poultry build-out (PROCAVA).
- $33M of ProDeCAP plus $1.3B of PSTACI anchored Côte d'Ivoire's aquaculture push.
None of these would have closed without the anchor. Each one then pulled in private co-investors who would not have entered solo.
Pay for the homework before you sign
Pre-investment work on an African food deal — feasibility, market sizing, regulatory mapping, ESG baseline — typically costs $1–3M and takes 6–12 months. The development institutions have already paid for most of it, and it's sitting in the public domain:
- AfDB's AAAP Adaptation Investment Catalogue 2025 and WEFE Nexus Investment Framework — pre-screened bankable projects, by sector and country.
- Afreximbank's African Trade Heatmaps — country-by-country trade flows, surpluses, deficits.
- AGRA's Africa Food Systems Report and IFPRI's country diagnostics — granular sectoral analysis written by teams that spent months in-country.
- AfDB country focus reports (Botswana, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Chad, RCA, Tunisia…) — the macro and sector picture you'd otherwise commission a consultant to build.
The investor's job is to read these, not redo them.
Insurance and rails for the boring shocks
Big deals collapse on small operational shocks — a drought, a currency mismatch, a six-week cross-border payment delay. The development institutions have funded the plumbing for exactly these:
- Pula (backed by AfDB, AGRA, Mercy Corps) writes index-based weather insurance across Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia. Your farmer suppliers get paid in a drought year; your supply chain doesn't snap.
- PAPSS (Afreximbank's Pan-African Payment & Settlement System) clears cross-border trade in local currencies in seconds, replacing the 30–90 day correspondent-banking lag that used to kill agri working capital.
- African Guarantee Fund and Afreximbank trade-finance guarantees wrap import-export receivables — the Kenyan importer buying your Ghanaian cocoa butter can pay 60 days later, and the seller still gets cash on day one.
- Aceli Africa and Sahel Capital sit in the deal-size range commercial banks don't reach ($25K–$1.5M tickets for agri-SMEs in East and West Africa) with blended debt + grant.
The continent's 55–75% unmet agri-finance gap isn't because the money doesn't exist — it's because the boring operational risks scared it off. The named instruments above are what re-channel it.
How the numbers are built
What the dashboard actually does, and where you can change the knobs.
The filter — who's in, who's out
We give every country two scores — Attractiveness for the market and Feasibility for the country itself. A country only drops out when both fall short of the floor. Strong on either side keeps it in.
- Lenient · 50 / 50 — drops only the worst.
- Balanced · 60 / 60 — the default. Cuts the middle of the field.
- Strict · 70 / 70 — keeps top-tier only.
The floor lives on the Overview tab. Move the slider and the Top-10, the Excluded list, and the country dropdown all re-rank live.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure traces to a public source — refreshed in the latest build.
The weights — your knobs
Slide a weight, click Apply, the whole dashboard re-ranks.
Attractiveness
Feasibility
Sector synthesis
How much each ingredient counts when ranking sectors inside one country.
The country score — five steps
Every number on the Overview map and the Top-10 list comes out of the same recipe.
Pull 11 raw indicators
Five feed Attractiveness, six feed Feasibility. The source list above tells you where each one comes from.
- Attractiveness — food imports (Comtrade), untapped export gap (ITC EPM), population (WDI), real GDP growth (IMF), ag share of GDP (WDI).
- Feasibility — 5-WGI average ex stability, political stability on its own, macro stability (inflation + debt + fiscal balance), business & regulation (B-READY with CPIA fallback), infrastructure & logistics (AIDI + LSCI), capital openness (FDI inflows).
Rescale each to 0–100
Min-max across the 54-country African peer set, so Mauritius and DRC sit on the same axis.
Long-tailed inputs (imports, EPM gap, population) go through log(1 + x) first so one giant economy doesn't drown the scale. "More-is-worse" inputs (inflation, debt) get inverted. Missing values get a neutral 50 — never a zero.
Average inside each pillar
Use the editable weights on the right. Two Feasibility components are sub-composites:
Combine the two pillars
The 50/50 split is hardwired. Everything else is editable — this is the one load-bearing assumption.
Apply the filter
A country drops out only when both scores fall below the floor. Change the floor on the Overview tab and eligibility flips live — Top-10, Excluded list, Import/Export tables, country dropdown.
The 3 angles — how each sector is tagged
For every country × product we pull four numbers — imports, exports, production tonnes, untapped export potential (ITC) — and label the row with one or more of three angles.
No local supply, big import bill.
prod-readiness < 20 AND imports > $50M
Nigeria buys $268M of milk powder a year and makes essentially none. Tanzania has no shot at oil palm — wrong climate.
The country grows some — but imports still win.
prod-readiness ≥ 20 AND imports > 1.5× exports (strong) / 1.2× (moderate)
Ghana rice: $286M of imports on top of a real local base. Kenya wheat is the bigger version of the same — $637M.
Already producing and shipping — there's more there.
a big untapped EPM gap · OR a champion already running (DX ≥ $50M and ≥ 3× imports, the ratio that rules out re-export hubs) · OR a balanced two-way hub
Kenya tea. Nigerian cocoa, $1.6B DX. Egypt sugar runs $1.0B in / $352M out.
What else you'll see on each row
- Size tier. The biggest of the three channels (imports, exports, EPM gap). Large ≥ $500M · Medium $100M–$500M · Small < $100M. Absolute, not peer-relative — "Large" means the same in Kenya as it does in Comoros.
- Strong vs Moderate. Strong = clean thresholds. Moderate = the relaxed ones, shown in italic. One row can carry several angles at once.
- Source badge on the production cell. model means trade-modelled (HS 19/20/21/23, where FAO doesn't track manufacturing — we use
max(domestic exports, ITC EPM potential)instead). fish means FAO FishStatJ for HS 03. Everything else is FAO Production_Crops_Livestock, mapped to HS via the official CPC↔HS2017 crosswalk (~96% coverage of African ag tonnage). - Re-export ratio on the country profile, so Mauritius and Djibouti don't look like production exporters when they're really moving other people's goods.
- When no angle fires, the hover tells you why: production-rich but trade-light (the Niger / Malawi vegetables pattern), tiny trade activity, or no production signal.
The sector score (0–100)
Four ingredients, weighted. All editable above.
- Net opportunity — imports + EPM gap, log-scaled. 40% by default.
- Production readiness — log of tonnes, normalized inside the country. 30%.
- Export potential gap — the ITC EPM number, on its own. 20%.
- Diversification bonus — penalises a list of six cereal sub-codes in a row by skipping HS2s already in the top three. 10%.
What we deliberately don't do
- No hard threshold rules on individual macro numbers. The floor takes the whole picture instead.
- No double-counting on political stability — the 5-WGI average leaves it out, and it gets its own line on top.
- No faked USD value for production tonnes. Tonnes stay tonnes; USD stays USD.
- "Process & ship" angle (raw vs. processed arbitrage) isn't in v1. It needs a curated HS pair list. Deferred.