Eswatini Export Trade Data: $2.10B in 2023, Up 5.28%

A Coca-Cola Concentrate Plant Anchors the Whole Export List

Eswatini exported $2.10 billion worth of goods in 2023, up 5.28% from $1.99 billion the year before, a new high across the five years of data available here. Essential oils, resinoids, and perfumery and cosmetic preparations led every export category by a wide margin, worth $586.39 million, or 27.98% of the total. That category is dominated by soft-drink concentrate. Coca-Cola Swaziland, known as CONCO, produces soft drink concentrate and supplies it to sixty bottling companies across 20 countries in Africa from its plant near Matsapha, making it one of the continent's principal concentrate-manufacturing hubs.

Sugar and sugar confectionery ranked second at 22.77% ($477.25 million), a category closely tied to the same concentrate industry, since sugarcane grown in Eswatini feeds both raw sugar exports and the syrup used in concentrate production. Sugarcane farming is one of the country's largest employers and land uses, and it has been for decades, well before the Coca-Cola plant arrived. Chemical products not elsewhere classified took 13.47% ($282.22 million), another category that likely overlaps with the beverage and flavoring industry rather than standing apart from it. Together, those three categories alone account for close to two-thirds of everything Eswatini ships abroad, an unusually narrow base even by the standards of small commodity-exporting economies.

Apparel not knitted or crocheted added 6.94% ($145.51 million), a category built on Eswatini's textile manufacturing sector, which has historically drawn investment partly because of preferential trade access to markets like the USA under programs supporting African apparel exports. Wood and articles of wood contributed 6.47% ($135.53 million), drawing on Eswatini's forestry and pulp industry, which covers a meaningful share of the country's Highveld region. Mineral fuels took 3.60% ($75.40 million), and beverages, spirits, and vinegar added 2.90% ($60.71 million), another category with links to the same beverage-industry cluster that anchors the top of this list. Knitted apparel contributed 2.35% ($49.32 million), and preparations of vegetables, fruit, and nuts added 1.89% ($39.66 million). Preparations of cereals, flour, starch, and milk closed out the top ten at 1.73% ($36.21 million).

South Africa Buys More Than Two-Thirds of Everything

South Africa bought 67.52% of Eswatini's exports, worth $1.41 billion, more than every other destination combined by a wide margin. Eswatini is landlocked and relies entirely on the seaports of its neighbors, primarily the South African ports of Durban and Richards Bay, a geographic reality that shapes trade patterns well beyond what raw export numbers alone would suggest. Kenya ranked a distant second at 4.28% ($89.64 million), and Mozambique took 3.91% ($82.00 million). Combined, those three destinations made up 75.71% of total export value in 2023.

Nigeria added 3.35% ($70.11 million), and Zimbabwe contributed 2.28% ($47.78 million). Tanzania took 1.70% ($35.55 million), and Uganda added 1.63% ($34.16 million). Italy contributed 1.62% ($33.98 million), and Botswana added 1.62% ($33.87 million). The United States closed out the top ten at 1.39% ($29.20 million). Outside of South Africa, most of Eswatini's remaining export destinations sit elsewhere in Africa, which fits the CONCO concentrate network's reach across the continent's bottling plants.

A Dip in 2022, Then a New High

Eswatini's export total moved through a modest cycle across the five years covered here. It stood at $2.00 billion in 2019, then fell to $1.75 billion in 2020 as the pandemic disrupted global trade. It rebounded to $2.07 billion in 2021, dipped slightly to $1.99 billion in 2022, then climbed to $2.10 billion in 2023, up 5.28% year over year and a new high for this five-year window.

With one category and one destination each accounting for such a large share of the total, Eswatini's export figures are unusually sensitive to decisions made far outside the country's own borders. A shift in Coca-Cola's regional bottling strategy, or a change in South African trade or currency policy, given the Eswatini lilangeni's peg to the South African rand, would likely move this total more than almost any domestic development could.

That sensitivity cuts in Eswatini's favor when conditions line up well, as the steady climb toward a new high in 2023 suggests, but it leaves little room to diversify away from risk quickly if either the concentrate industry or the South African relationship were to weaken. For a country this small, with an export base this concentrated in a single manufacturing plant and a single neighboring market, the usual advice to watch commodity prices or currency swings applies with unusual force. Few countries covered on this site have their entire trade picture shaped so heavily by one factory and one border crossing.