Steel prices in Côte d'Ivoire — what was actually paid in 2024

Côte d'Ivoire imports 482,000 tonnes of steel across these headings and sends almost nothing back out. What makes the shape distinctive is the mix: wire rod alone is more than 40 % of it, arriving at the lowest unit value on this site, to be drawn and formed locally. The second distinctive feature is concentration — China supplies three quarters of that wire rod and almost all of the coated sheet — and the third is geography, because Abidjan serves three landlocked countries as well as its own market.

Last updated 24 September 2026

These are declared border values, not offers. Côte d'Ivoire reports them; we divide dollars by kilos. How it is done and where it breaks down →

• 482,279 tsteel imported (2024)
• 18,845 tsteel exported
• Net importer463,434 t short

Imports

Exports

What the Côte d'Ivoire numbers say

• Côte d'Ivoire pays from 607 USD per tonne for wire rod up to 1,082 for narrow coated strip — 1.8× — with the bottom of that range among the lowest declared anywhere in this data.
• Wire rod is 42 % of the inbound tonnage, and it arrives as raw material for local conversion rather than as a finished product.
• Supply is concentrated: China holds 74 % of the top five lanes on that heading, an unusually narrow base.
• On hot-rolled coil and plate the country pays 687 USD per tonne and receives 1,863 — the export figure is a handful of tonnes and says more about re-export than about production.

Buying and selling into Côte d'Ivoire

• Wire rod is the largest line by a distance: 200,409 tonnes in 2024 at 607 USD per tonne, the lowest declared import value on this site. It is nearly twice the coated sheet volume and forty times the hot-rolled bar volume — a market buying semi-finished long product and converting it locally rather than importing finished shapes.
• Supply is more concentrated here than anywhere else covered on this site. China holds 74 % of the wire rod tonnage and 96 % of the coated sheet. When one origin carries that share of a heading, the landed price in Abidjan moves with one country's export offer rather than with a market.
• Abidjan is the port, and increasingly the region's port: the container terminal expansion has taken capacity well beyond national demand, and a share of what lands there moves on by road to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. A quotation for a landlocked destination is a different exercise from one for Abidjan itself, and the inland leg usually costs more than the sea freight.
• San Pédro takes bulk and project cargo in the west and is the practical alternative when Abidjan is congested, particularly for mining and infrastructure work.
• The CFA franc is pegged to the euro at a fixed rate, which is unusual and commercially useful: a buyer paying in euro carries no currency risk, while the same buyer paying in dollars carries all of it. Offering in EUR is worth more here than a small discount in USD.
• Duty follows the ECOWAS common external tariff rather than a national schedule, and a conformity verification programme applies to regulated imports — scope and inspection body should be confirmed before the goods are booked, not after. Documentation is in French; an English-only invoice set slows clearance.

Main supplying countries

Wire rod (HS 7213)

Coated sheet (galvanized and painted) (HS 7210)

Hot-rolled coil and plate (HS 7208)

Cold-rolled sheet (HS 7209)

Other markets

Questions about steel prices in Côte d'Ivoire