Africa Commodity Prices — World Bank Pink Sheet

Monthly commodity prices for 70 commodities (January 1960 – present) from the World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet) — the most widely cited global commodity price reference.

Every record is annotated with an Africa-relevance tier, a trade-flow profile (top exporters/importers by world share), a year-on-year price change, and a dependence-weighted terms-of-trade impact — i.e. how each price move actually hits the economies that export the commodity (exportImpactPct = YoY% × the commodity's share of the country's exports). This makes the data immediately useful for African economic research, procurement analysis, and investment screening. Pass a country code to see just that economy's commodity-export exposure.

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Data source & licence

Source	Coverage	Licence
World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet)	71 commodities, Jan 1960–present, monthly	CC BY 4.0 — The World Bank

Attribution requirement (CC BY 4.0): Every output record carries source.licenseNote with the required attribution text. If you use this data in a product or publication, cite: World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet).

Trade-flow profiles are derived from UN Comtrade (public API, annual data). Profiles are year-matched: a price row for, say, 2003-04 is enriched with 2003 trade flows, not a single fixed snapshot. See Trade enrichment for coverage.

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Modes

latest (default) — $0.05 flat

Returns one record per commodity for the most recently published month (~71 records). Updated monthly by the World Bank, typically in the first week of each month.

historical — $0.008 per (commodity × month) record

Returns all records in a date range. Full history (70 commodities × 797 months) is ~$446; filtering by africaRelevanceFilter: ["high", "explicit"] (31 commodities) reduces this to ~$197.

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Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
mode	"latest" | "historical"	"latest"	See above
dateFrom	YYYY-MM	—	Start month (historical mode, required)
dateTo	YYYY-MM	—	End month (historical mode, required). Earliest: 1960-01
commodities	string[]	all 71	Filter to specific commodity codes, e.g. ["COCOA", "GOLD"]
africaRelevanceFilter	string[]	all	Filter by tier: explicit, high, medium, low
country	string (ISO-2/3)	—	Export-exposure filter. When set, returns only the commodity that country depends on (its curated primary export), with exportDependence highlighting it. Resolves for the ~10 countries in the export-dependence table (e.g. CI→cocoa, ZM→copper, NG→crude).
maxItems	integer	10000	Hard cap on output records

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Output fields

Field	Type	Description
id	string	"COMMODITYCODE:YYYY-MM"
commodityCode	string	Normalised slug: COCOA, GOLD, CRUDE_OIL_BRENT, etc.
commodityName	string	Exact Pink Sheet name
period	string	"YYYY-MM"
price	number | null	Nominal USD price. Null if not published for that month — record is still included, check warnings
unit	string	$/kg, $/mt, $/bbl, $/mmbtu, $/troy oz, etc.
changeYoyPct	number | null	Year-on-year price change %, vs ~12 months earlier (nearest within ±1mo). Null when no prior point exists.
africaRelevance	string	explicit / high / medium / low
tradeProfile	object | null	Trade profile for this row's year (see sub-fields); null if the commodity is unmapped or no trade data exists for that year
tradeProfile.dataYear	number	The Comtrade year the profile is built from (equals tradeProfileYear)
tradeProfile.topExporters	CountryShare[]	Top global exporters (≤5) — ISO alpha-3, name, world share %
tradeProfile.topImporters	CountryShare[]	Top global importers (≤5) — ISO alpha-3, name, world share %
tradeProfile.africaExportSharePct	number | null	Africa's combined share of world exports %; null if no African country in Comtrade data
tradeProfile.africaImportSharePct	number | null	Africa's combined share of world imports %; null if no African country in Comtrade data
tradeProfile.topAfricanExporters	CountryShare[]	All African exporters ranked by world share — no length cap
tradeProfile.topAfricanImporters	CountryShare[]	All African importers ranked by world share — no length cap
tradeProfileYear	number | null	Calendar year whose trade flows were applied, or null when no enrichment was available
exportDependence	object[]	Dependence-weighted terms-of-trade impact — for each exporting economy: countryIso3, countryName, dependencePct, basis, exportImpactPct (= changeYoyPct × dependencePct / 100). Sorted most-adverse first. Empty when no exporters are known.
exportDependence[].basis	string	oec = the commodity's real share of that country's total exports (OEC — accurate); world-share = proxy = the country's share of world exports of the commodity (indicative only — world-share ≠ true export dependence). Filter to oec for the rigorous figures.
source.name	string	"World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet)"
source.url	string	URL of the Excel file used for this run
source.retrievedAt	ISO 8601	When the actor fetched the data
source.licenseNote	string	CC BY 4.0 attribution
warnings	string[]	"price_null" (price absent in source); "trade_profile_unavailable" (mapped commodity, but no trade data for this row's year)

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Trade enrichment coverage

Trade-flow profiles are year-matched to each price row, derived from UN Comtrade (HS classification, annual). Because trade data is annual while prices are monthly, all twelve months of a year share that year's profile.

Price period	Enrichment
1992 – 2024	✅ Year-matched profile (where Comtrade reports the commodity that year)
before 1992	❌ tradeProfile: null, warnings: ["trade_profile_unavailable"] — HS trade data does not exist that far back
after the last refreshed year	❌ null + trade_profile_unavailable until the profiles are refreshed

30 of the 71 commodities are mapped to an HS code and carry trade profiles — all explicit and high Africa-relevance commodities with a clean HS heading, plus nickel and rubber. The other ~41 (mostly low/medium-relevance, e.g. WTI crude, Malaysian timber, Mexican shrimp) have tradeProfile: null with no warning — enrichment was never offered for them.

The profile never carries a different year's flows onto a row: if the exact year is missing, the field is null. This keeps the data faithful (no fabricated context).

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Africa relevance tiers

Tier	Count	Criteria
explicit	4	Named after an African location: Coal South African, Tea Mombasa, Logs Cameroon, Sawnwood Cameroon
high	27	Africa is a major global producer/exporter, or it is a primary food-security staple for SSA
medium	26	Some African trade significance
low	13	Limited direct connection to African economies

Key high-relevance commodities: Cocoa, Coffee (Arabica/Robusta), Tea avg, Groundnuts, Palm oil, Maize, Sorghum, Rice, Wheat, Cotton, Tobacco, Phosphate, Copper, Gold, Platinum, Aluminum, Iron ore, Sugar world, Crude oil avg/Brent.

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Commodity codes

Full list of all 71 commodity codes available in the actor. Use these in the commodities input filter.

CRUDE_OIL_AVG · CRUDE_OIL_BRENT · CRUDE_OIL_DUBAI · CRUDE_OIL_WTI · COAL_AUSTRALIAN · COAL_SOUTH_AFRICAN · NATURAL_GAS_US · NATURAL_GAS_EUROPE · LNG_JAPAN · COCOA · COFFEE_ARABICA · COFFEE_ROBUSTA · TEA_AVG · TEA_COLOMBO · TEA_KOLKATA · TEA_MOMBASA · COCONUT_OIL · GROUNDNUTS · FISH_MEAL · GROUNDNUT_OIL · PALM_OIL · PALM_KERNEL_OIL · SOYBEANS · SOYBEAN_OIL · SOYBEAN_MEAL · RAPESEED_OIL · SUNFLOWER_OIL · BARLEY · MAIZE · SORGHUM · RICE_THAI_5 · RICE_THAI_25 · RICE_THAI_A1 · RICE_VIETNAM_5 · WHEAT_SRW · WHEAT_HRW · BANANA_EUROPE · BANANA_US · ORANGE · BEEF · CHICKEN · LAMB · SHRIMPS_MEXICAN · SUGAR_EU · SUGAR_US · SUGAR_WORLD · TOBACCO · LOGS_CAMEROON · LOGS_MALAYSIAN · SAWNWOOD_CAMEROON · SAWNWOOD_MALAYSIAN · PLYWOOD · COTTON · RUBBER_TSR20 · RUBBER_RSS3 · PHOSPHATE · DAP · TSP · UREA · POTASSIUM_CHLORIDE · ALUMINUM · IRON_ORE · COPPER · LEAD · TIN · NICKEL · ZINC · GOLD · PLATINUM · SILVER

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Notes

• Prices are nominal USD — no real/inflation-adjusted series.
• Data is delayed: the actor fetches the World Bank's published Excel file; there is typically a 1–5 day lag from the calendar month-end.
• Monthly cadence: schedule this actor once per month, around the 5th (after the World Bank publishes the update).
• Trade profiles are static (UN Comtrade, HS, 1992–2024) and bundled with the actor image; they are year-matched to each row but do not change per run. Refreshed ~annually via scripts/refresh-trade-profiles.ts.