Basotho Wool

data analysis
tidy tuesday
dataviz
Author

Ntobeko Sosibo [Afrikaniz3D]

Published

August 8, 2026

 

DESCRIPTION Investigating Lesotho’s wool and mohair trade using data pulled with the comtradr package.
TOOLS RStudio, Quarto, HTML, CSS, Inkscape, GIMP
PROJECT_TYPE Data manipulation, Data analysis, Data visualization, Graphic Design
LINKS Github Repo

 

The Goal

Because I was already familiar with this data (having been the one to curate and submit it), I wanted to let the story within the article guide what I wanted to visualise. A detail that stood out to me what I was looking for additional info about the topic was the consistent mention controversy within the sector related to the restructuring of the market to prioritise a a new client. This involved the Agricultural Marketing (Wool and Mohair Licensing) (Amendment) Regulations, 2018. I wanted to see if this generated a visible change on a timeline if it was charted, as well as what those changes could tell the viewer about the industry from a high-level trade partner perspective.

 
 

The Process

Before I sat down proper to work on this project (the data analysis/exploration aspect), I’d already decided there were going to be hand-drawn spools/balls of wool involved. It’s corny. Sue me.

 

Chart Type

There were a few options I could incorporate that visual into:

  • a smoothed line chart to represent the thread, and the spools significant data points
  • a scatterplot for a “balls in the air” visual
  • a lollip- you get the idea, lot’s of options.

I chose the waffle chart, of the iconographic variety, because I have plans for that chart type in the near future. What’s nice about the waffle chart is that I could sneak in some stacked bar chart tendencies along with some conditional formatting via colour tones for more context.

Lesotho has four (4) named partners in this dataset:

unique(basotho_wool$reporter_desc)
# [1] "South Africa" "India"        "China"        "Uruguay"

I assigned colours from the nation’s flag(s) to the above and extended the palette to also include softer/lighter tones I could use for binning aggregates according to the partner country’s trade relative to their historical range.

 

Visual detail and data completeness

I came to discover that finding the bin value (the dollar amount each spool/cell represented) was a delicate balance between producing cells large enough to see the detail of the hand-drawn spools, and a threshold where no country was completely excluded due to not meeting/surpassing it:

Once I’d settled on the scaffolding chart’s composition, I exported an .svg file I could use as the underlay for the chart’s stylised presentation.

 

What did I want to share?

I really enjoy the Tidy Tuesday project for not being too descript about what you need to show or discuss about the data. Lately I’ve been looking at every new project as an opportunity to work with data in a form/context I’m not yet familiar with, rather than making sure values (monetary or weight, for example) being expressed to the cent or milligram. Choosing to hover around the ‘high-level’ figures is great for keeping a project fast-moving when things are busy. With that said, I looked for what stood out and how I could tie it back the narratives I’d been picking up in some of the related articles I read

 

What was the raw chart saying?

Earlier, I mentioned the Agricultural Marketing (Wool and Mohair Licensing) (Amendment) Regulations. I could see on the chart that India had a strong presence in 2011-2013, fading as as China’s grew. China hit their stride in 2018 - coinciding with the new regulations at the time. The articles i read also mentioned China and how the situation was really contentious. This felt like good context to add to the chart in the form of an annotation.

COVID-19 and its impact have are always something I look for.. In this case, you can see China’s performance dipped to the mid-range and recovered to its peak in 2013.

 
 

The Final Presentation

What was left was to put in on a layout, distilling it all in a colour-coded headline, and filling in some details in the caption in case some things in the chart aren’t immediately clear.

Code 
 #loading libraries
 suppressPackageStartupMessages({
   library(htmltools)
   library(htmlwidgets)
   library(webshot2) # for exporting the presentation panel as a high resolution image
   })


 # presentation base container (the canvas)
 basotho_wool_final_viz <- 
   htmltools::tagList(
   tags$div(
     style = "
       background-color: white;
       padding: 50px;
       margin-left: 20px;
       margin-right: 50px;
       margin-bottom: 20px;
       ",
     
   # responsive flexbox for the headline
  tags$div(
    style = "
     display: flex; 
     flex-wrap: wrap; 
     gap: 30px; 
     align-items: flex-start; 
     width: 100%;
   ", 
    
     # headline and subtitle wrapper
     tags$div(
       style = "
         flex: 1;
         min-width: 400px; 
         display: flex; 
         flex-direction: column;
         padding-bottom: 20px;
       ",
       # title
       tags$div(
         style = "text-align:left; margin-bottom: 15px; font-family: Plus Jakarta Sans; font-weight: 950; line-height: 1.1;",
         HTML(
           "<span style='color:#00205b; font-size:55px;'>Decoupling</span> <span style='color:#888; font-size:55px;'>, </span> <span style='color:#00743c; font-size:55px;'>Regional Realignment </span> <span style='color:#888; font-size:55px;'>, </span> <span style='color:#8c2d19; font-size:55px;'> Secondary Buyer Re-entry </span> <span style='color:#888; font-size:55px;'>, and </span> <span style='color:#262626; font-size:55px;'> Emerging Markets </span> "
       )
     ),
       # subtitle
       tags$div(
         style = "text-align:left; font-family: Inter, sans-serif; font-size:26px; font-weight: 300; # color:#888; line-height:1.4; margin-bottom:30px;",
         HTML(
           "Between <span style='font-weight: 700;'> 2011 </span> and <span style='font-weight: 700;'> 2013 </span>, Lesotho’s international wool exports featured a distinct multi-market footprint, driven heavily by Indian manufacturing demand alongside established South African trade routes. The landmark <span style='font-weight: 700;'> 2018 Agricultural Marketing (Wool and Mohair Licensing) Regulations </span> fundamentally disrupted this landscape, severing traditional South African brokerage pipelines in favor of direct Chinese licensing channels. Amplified by COVID-19 market shocks, trade consolidated heavily into a dual-partner framework. However, the 2023–2024 ledger signals a potential broadening of the international buyer base, marked by India’s return to the $500,000 threshold and Uruguay’s debut into the volume trade bracket."
         )
       )
      
     )
  ),
 
# responsive flexbox that holds the chart
tags$div(
  style = "
    display: flex; 
    flex-wrap: wrap; 
    gap: 20px; 
    align-items: flex-start; 
    width: 100%;
  ",
  
    # the chart
    tags$img(src = "img/TT1/tt1003.png", style = "width: 100%; height: auto;")
  
), # closing responsive flexbox that holds the chart
 
 
 
 # start of page footer with data and author details
 tags$div(
   style = "display: flex; justify-content: center; align-items: center; flex-wrap: wrap; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px;",
   
   # Data Source wrapper to ensure it scales nicely
   tags$span(
     style = "display: inline-flex; align-items: center;",
     
     tags$span(
       "Data Source :",
       style = "color: #888; text-decoration: none; font-family: Plus Jakarta Sans; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 450; margin-right: 5px;"
     ),
 
     # tidy tuesday repo link
     tags$a(
       "Basotho Wool via Tidy Tuesday (2026-31)",
       href = "[https://github.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/blob/main/data/2026/2026-08-04/readme.md](https://github.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/blob/main/data/2026/2026-08-04/readme.md)",
       target = "_blank",
       style = "color: #00205b; text-decoration: none; font-family: Plus Jakarta Sans; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold;"
     )
   ),
 
   # Replaced raw HTML spaces with a clean CSS margin spacer
   tags$span(style = "margin-left: 40px;"),
 
   # author social media handles wrapper
   tags$span(
     style = "display: inline-flex; align-items: center; gap: 20px;",
     
     # linkedin wrapper
     tags$span(
       style = "display: inline-flex; align-items: center; white-space: nowrap;",   
       
       # linkedin logo
       tags$img(
         HTML('<svg xmlns="[http://www.w3.org/2000/svg](http://www.w3.org/2000/svg)" width="20" height="20" fill="#00205b"  class="bi bi-linkedin" viewBox="0 0 16 16">
       <path d="M0 1.146C0 .513.526 0 1.175 0h13.65C15.474 0 16 .513 16 1.146v13.708c0 .633-.526  1.146-1.175 1.146H1.175C.526 16 0 15.487 0 14.854zm4.943 12.248V6.169H2.542v7.225zm-1.2-8.212c.837 0  1.358-.554 1.358-1.248-.015-.709-.52-1.248-1.342-1.248S2.4 3.226 2.4 3.934c0 .694.521 1.248 1.327  1.248zm4.908 8.212V9.359c0-.216.016-.432.08-.586.173-.431.568-.878 1.232-.878.869 0 1.216.662 1.216  1.634v3.865h2.401V9.25c0-2.22-1.184-3.252-2.764-3.252-1.274 0-1.845.7-2.165  1.193v.025h-.016l.016-.025V6.169h-2.4c.03.678 0 7.225 0 7.225z"/>
     </svg>')
       ), 
 
       # linkedin link
       tags$a(
         "Ntobeko Sosibo",
         href = "[https://www.linkedin.com/in/ntobeko-sosibo/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ntobeko-sosibo/)",
         target = "_blank",
         style = "margin-left: 10px; color: #888; text-decoration: none; font-family: 'Plus Jakarta Sans'; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 450;"
       )
     ),
       
     # github wrapper
     tags$span(
       style = "display: inline-flex; align-items: center; white-space: nowrap;",
 
       # github logo
       tags$img(
         HTML(
           '<svg xmlns="[http://www.w3.org/2000/svg](http://www.w3.org/2000/svg)" width="20" height="20" fill="#00205b" class="bi bi-github" viewBox="0 0 16 16">
       <path d="M8 0C3.58 0 0 3.58 0 8c0 3.54 2.29 6.53 5.47 7.59.4.07.55-.17.55-.38  0-.19-.01-.82-.01-1.49-2.01.37-2.53-.49-2.69-.94-.09-.23-.48-.94-.82-1.13-.28-.15-.68-.52-.01-.53.63 -.01 1.08.58 1.23.82.72 1.21 1.87.87 2.33.66.07-.52.28-.87.51-1.07-1.78-.2-3.64-.89-3.64-3.95  0-.87.31-1.59.82-2.15-.08-.2-.36-1.02.08-2.12 0 0 .67-.21 2.2.82.64-.18 1.32-.27 2-.27s1.36.09 2  .27c1.53-1.04 2.2-.82 2.2-.82.44 1.1.16 1.92.08 2.12.51.56.82 1.27.82 2.15 0 3.07-1.87 3.75-3.65  3.95.29.25.54.73.54 1.48 0 1.07-.01 1.93-.01 2.2 0 .21.15.46.55.38A8.01 8.01 0 0 0 16 8c0-4.42-3.58-8-8-8"/>
     </svg>'
        )
       ),
       
       # github link
       tags$a(
         "afrikaniz3d-za",
         href = "[https://github.com/afrikaniz3d-za](https://github.com/afrikaniz3d-za)",
         target = "_blank",
         style = "margin-left: 10px; color: #888; text-decoration: none; font-family: Plus Jakarta Sans; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 450;"
         )
       ),
       
     # bluesky wrapper
     tags$span(
       style = "display: inline-flex; align-items: center; white-space: nowrap;",
 
       # bluesky logo
       tags$img(
         HTML(
           '<svg xmlns="[http://www.w3.org/2000/svg](http://www.w3.org/2000/svg)" width="20" height="20" fill="#00205b" class="bi bi-bluesky" viewBox="0 0 16 16">
       <path d="M3.468 1.948C5.303 3.325 7.276 6.118 8 7.616c.725-1.498 2.698-4.29 4.532-5.668C13.855.955 16 .186 16 2.632c0 .489-.28 4.105-.444 4.692-.572 2.04-2.653 2.561-4.504 2.246 3.236.551 4.06 2.375 2.281 4.2-3.376 3.464-4.852-.87-5.23-1.98-.07-.204-.103-.3-.103-.218 0-.081-.033.014-.102.218-.379 1.11-1.855 5.444-5.231 1.98-1.778-1.825-.955-3.65 2.28-4.2-1.85.315-3.932-.205-4.503-2.246C.28 6.737 0 3.12 0 2.632 0 .186 2.145.955 3.468 1.948"/>
     </svg>'
         )
       ),
 
       # bluesky link
       tags$a(
         "afrikaniz3d",
         href = "[https://bsky.app/profile/afrikaniz3d.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/afrikaniz3d.bsky.social)",
         target = "_blank",
         style = "margin-left: 10px; color: #888; text-decoration: none; font-family: Plus Jakarta Sans; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 450;"
               )
             ), # closing bluesky wrapper
 
     # mastodon wrapper
     tags$span(
       style = "display: inline-flex; align-items: center; white-space: nowrap;",
 
       # mastodon logo
       tags$img(
         HTML(
           '<svg xmlns="[http://www.w3.org/2000/svg](http://www.w3.org/2000/svg)" width="20" height="20" fill="#00205b" class="bi bi-mastodon" viewBox="0 0 16 16">
       <path d="M11.19 12.195c2.016-.24 3.77-1.475 3.99-2.603.348-1.778.32-4.339.32-4.339 0-3.47-2.286-4.488-2.286-4.488C12.062.238 10.083.017 8.027 0h-.05C5.92.017 3.942.238 2.79.765c0 0-2.285 1.017-2.285 4.488l-.002.662c-.004.64-.007 1.35.011 2.091.083 3.394.626 6.74 3.78 7.57 1.454.383 2.703.463 3.709.408 1.823-.1 2.847-.647 2.847-.647l-.06-1.317s-1.303.41-2.767.36c-1.45-.05-2.98-.156-3.215-1.928a4 4 0 0 1-.033-.496s1.424.346 3.228.428c1.103.05 2.137-.064 3.188-.189zm1.613-2.47H11.13v-4.08c0-.859-.364-1.295-1.091-1.295-.804 0-1.207.517-1.207 1.541v2.233H7.168V5.89c0-1.024-.403-1.541-1.207-1.541-.727 0-1.091.436-1.091 1.296v4.079H3.197V5.522q0-1.288.66-2.046c.456-.505 1.052-.764 1.793-.764.856 0 1.504.328 1.933.983L8 4.39l.417-.695c.429-.655 1.077-.983 1.934-.983.74 0 1.336.259 1.791.764q.662.757.661 2.046z"/>
     </svg>'
         )
       ),
 
       # mastodon link
       tags$a(
         "afrikaniz3d",
         href = "[https://mastodon.social/@afrikaniz3d](https://mastodon.social/@afrikaniz3d)",
         target = "_blank",
         style = "margin-left: 10px; color: #888; text-decoration: none; font-family: Plus Jakarta Sans; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 450;"
               )
             ) # closing mastodon wrapper
           ) # closing social media handles wrapper
         ) # closing page footer
 
   )
 )
 
 
 basotho_wool_final_viz
Decoupling , Regional Realignment , Secondary Buyer Re-entry , and Emerging Markets
Between 2011 and 2013 , Lesotho’s international wool exports featured a distinct multi-market footprint, driven heavily by Indian manufacturing demand alongside established South African trade routes. The landmark 2018 Agricultural Marketing (Wool and Mohair Licensing) Regulations fundamentally disrupted this landscape, severing traditional South African brokerage pipelines in favor of direct Chinese licensing channels. Amplified by COVID-19 market shocks, trade consolidated heavily into a dual-partner framework. However, the 2023–2024 ledger signals a potential broadening of the international buyer base, marked by India’s return to the $500,000 threshold and Uruguay’s debut into the volume trade bracket.
Code 
 #------------------------------------------------------
 # exporting the presentation as a high resolution image

   
 # writing the html file directly to the project folder
 htmltools::save_html(basotho_wool_final_viz, "temp_basotho_wool_final_render.html")
 
 
 # webshot "takes" a picture of the html file, saving it in the same directory
 webshot2::webshot(
   url = "temp_basotho_wool_final_render.html",
   file = "Basotho_Wool_Final.png",
   vwidth = 1920,   
   vheight = 1080,
   delay = 3,       # extra time for any animations to complete playing
   zoom = 2         # double pixel density for sharpness
   )

I could have also done this part in Inkscape given that there weren’t to be any interactive elements, but I like having a project set up to be potentially interactive in case I decide to revisit the project in the future. There were so many other aspects I could have gone deeper into, like representing an average herder’s earnings next to a single spool (((it’s staggering))).

This was a fun project to work on and look forward to sharing more thought-process-type posts for my newer (and older) submissions in the future.

   

References