Who filed the table, and what it leaves out
A mirror table is other people’s bookkeeping. Every exporting country files what it sent here, the totals are added, and the sum stands in for an import statement nobody here published. The arithmetic is sound; the coverage is not. A partner reporting late or not at all drops out, and every share moves.
The bias runs one way, too: goods that clear into a country in the region and then cross a land border are booked as an export to that country. An inland market is under-counted, and the credit goes to the last exporter.
The chocolate column: one long-haul name, two regional ones
110,056 US dollars a year is a small column with an unusual shape. Belgium holds 51.2 per cent of it — branded long-haul stock, bought on a name your customer already knows. Behind it sit Uganda at 23.1 and Egypt at 17.4 per cent, and one of those is a regional address rather than a chocolate-making country.
Türkiye is fourth at 5.3 per cent. On a column this size that is pallets, not a programme; what it does show is that the route works and the documents clear.
The sweet column, and the single origin holding it
Sugar confectionery is much the larger of the two: 2,089,752 US dollars, of which Kenya holds 90.2 per cent. India follows at 5.9 and Egypt at 2.4 per cent. Almost the whole sweet shelf comes from one regional origin, along one corridor.
Türkiye is seventh at 0.14 per cent — not a position but an absence with a decimal point. The question is not how to displace nine tenths of a column, but what a second line is worth on a shelf that has none.
Why the two columns disagree about where goods come from
Two tables, one market, pointing opposite ways. Part of it is the product: boiled sweets, jellies and wrapped candy travel dry, tolerate heat, and can be bought nearby at a price a long road leg does not spoil. Chocolate wants temperature control, so it comes either a long way from a source that manages it, or the last stretch from somebody who already imported it.
The rest is how each is bought. Chocolate is a brand decision on a small shelf; sugar confectionery a format and price decision on a large one.
The part of the journey no table records
Neither column shows how any of it arrives. No sea leg ends in this country: whatever the origin, the last stretch is a road one out of a regional port, through a transit movement and an inland customs office, with the importer holding the registration and filing the consignment. That leg is where landed cost is decided.
It also explains the regional names in both columns. A carton imported once, sold once and then driven over a border carries two margins before it reaches you; loading at origin makes the number of hands something you choose.
Turning a column into an order
A table this size will not carry a standing monthly programme, and we will not pretend otherwise. It carries a planned load built around the seasons you sell into, mixed across the lines you choose — chocolate, dragées, Turkish delight, wrapped confectionery and spreads in jars — the minimum set per line, not per container (mixed container).
Send the references you want priced, the format for each, a quantity and your inland delivery point. The offer comes back line by line: ingredients and allergens, net weight, case and pallet data, lead time and delivery term. Terms are FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP, Mersin being about three hours from our factory by road; certificates are issued for our factory.
Uganda is second in the chocolate column. Is chocolate made there?
A mirror table records a shipment, not a history, so we cannot prove either reading. What we can say is that a regional origin holding 23.1 per cent of a chocolate column more often means goods that crossed one border, cleared, and crossed a second than a factory on that side. Each crossing is a margin and a handling stage priced into what reaches your shelf, which is the part you can decide rather than inherit.
Türkiye is at 0.14 per cent of the sweet column. Why is that an argument?
Because it describes the shelf, not the product. Kenya holds 90.2 per cent of that column, so nearly every dragée, jelly and wrapped sweet in the market has come down one corridor. A second line is not bought to beat that on price; it is bought so a listing can still be filled in the month the first line is late, and so your carton is not the same carton as the shop next door.
How firm are the figures on this page?
They are mirror figures for 2024 and we label them as such: Burundi does not report its own imports, so the 110,056 US dollars of chocolate and 2,089,752 of sugar confectionery are what the rest of the world recorded as exports here. A partner reporting late or partially moves every share in the table. Read the ranking as a direction of travel rather than a settled total. Couverture, bulk chocolate by the kilo, raw nuts, dried fruit and cocoa sit outside our range and are sourced on request; we confirm composition and format before quoting.
