Central African Rep. Exports: $113.28M in 2023, Down 2.0%

Dubai's Diamond Trade Explains the UAE's Dominance

The Central African Republic shipped $113.28 million worth of goods abroad in 2023, down 2.0% from $115.54 million the year before. United Arab Emirates absorbed 69.4% of that total, worth $78.59 million, by far the largest destination for anything the country exports. Research on the country's diamond trade explains that in recent years, most of the country's formal diamond exports have flowed through Dubai, a global cutting and trading hub, which helps explain why a single Gulf market so thoroughly dominates a landlocked Central African country's export list. That trade had operated under a Kimberley Process embargo imposed in 2013 after conflict diamonds helped finance rebel groups during the country's civil war, with restrictions only fully lifted in 2024. From Dubai, that same research describes the diamonds moving onward to established cutting and polishing centers such as Antwerp, Mumbai, and Hong Kong, meaning the Gulf market's role in this trade is largely that of a transit and trading hub rather than a final destination where the stones are consumed.

Italy ranked second at 7.1% ($8.05 million), and France followed at 5.7% ($6.44 million), a continuation of colonial-era trade ties. Together, the UAE, Italy, and France, the top three buyers, account for 82.2% of total export value. China added 3.8% ($4.32 million), Gabon 3.7% ($4.21 million), Vietnam 1.8% ($2.06 million), Germany 1.6% ($1.82 million), Cameroon 1.3% ($1.46 million), Spain 1.2% ($1.38 million), and Turkey rounded out the top ten at 0.6% ($0.71 million).

Diamonds and Timber Make Up Nearly All Exports

Natural and cultured pearls, precious and semi-precious stones, and precious metals, a category dominated in practice by rough diamonds, led all export categories in 2023, worth $86.52 million and accounting for 76.4% of total value, more than every other category combined. Wood and articles of wood ranked a distant second at 10.9% ($12.38 million). Industry data on the country's timber sector notes that transporting logs out of the landlocked country typically means trucking them overland to Cameroon or moving them by river and rail toward the Republic of Congo, since the Central African Republic has no port of its own, a routing pattern that likely explains why neighboring Cameroon shows up among the country's top ten export destinations, since goods moving overland toward a coastal port are often recorded in trade statistics as flowing to the transit country before continuing on to their true overseas buyer.

Vehicles added 4.6% ($5.25 million), likely reflecting re-exported used cars rather than domestic manufacturing, and machinery and mechanical appliances contributed 1.6% ($1.81 million). Electrical machinery added 1.3% ($1.43 million), headgear 0.9% ($1.00 million), miscellaneous edible preparations 0.8% ($0.94 million), and cotton 0.8% ($0.90 million), a small but notable entry given the country's Sahelian cotton-growing north. Toys, games, and sports requisites closed at 0.7% ($0.75 million), and railway and tramway equipment rounded out the top ten at 0.4% ($0.50 million). Outside of diamonds and timber, none of these categories reaches even $2 million in annual value, underscoring how narrow the country's formal export base really is once the two dominant commodities are set aside.

A Volatile Recovery From a Pandemic-Era Collapse

The Central African Republic's exports have followed an unusually volatile path over the past five years. They stood at $123.97 million in 2019, then collapsed to just $40.53 million in 2020, a drop of more than two-thirds, as the pandemic froze the global travel and trading activity that formal diamond exports depend on. Exports recovered to $57.73 million in 2021, then jumped to $115.54 million in 2022, essentially back to pre-pandemic levels, before easing slightly to $113.28 million in 2023, down 2.0% year over year.

Given that more than three-quarters of export value rests on a single category traded through a single Gulf hub, and that the underlying diamond trade only fully emerged from more than a decade of embargo restrictions in 2024, the country's export figures in the years ahead may prove just as sensitive to shifts in international diamond-trade policy as they have been to global economic shocks like the pandemic, particularly as full Kimberley Process participation potentially opens the door to a larger share of the country's actual diamond production being captured in formal trade statistics rather than moving through informal or smuggled channels. For a closer look at how individual partner countries or product categories break down year over year, the data panels above provide the full detail behind these figures.