FAQ

The tools are free and there is no account, no trial and no card. The commercial model is advisory work and licensing to associations — the diagnostic is how people find us, not what we sell.

The honest caveat: a free diagnostic is a lead-generation instrument as well as a useful tool. We think it is a good one. You should still read the numbers with that in mind, which is why the method and its limits are published in full.

Nowhere. Every calculation runs in your browser and every saved result is written to your device. The app makes no network requests after the first load, and that is enforced by a content security policy rather than merely promised.

The flip side: we cannot recover anything for you, and nothing syncs between devices. Export what matters.

The rail bands come straight from published KRC SGR tariffs and are solid, but they cover line haul only — first and last mile, lift charges and ICD storage must be added before comparing rail to road.

The road bands are derived from Kenya Transporters Association rate guidance and reported lane rates. They show their arithmetic and they are defensible, but they are not a dataset of observed transactions. Treat them as a reference point, not as market truth.

It does not — that is the point. Skipping a domain lowers the confidence figure shown beside your score rather than the score itself, because an unanswered domain counted as zero at full weight would be a made-up number.

Options marked “not scored” leave the calculation entirely, so an operator with no bonded warehouse is not given a middling mark for something they do not do.

Yes — every tool exports a print-ready PDF with the method, the sources and the date on it, which is precisely what makes it usable in a board pack.

It is decision support, not an audited statement. The financeability score in particular is the arithmetic a lender runs in the first ten minutes, done in advance; it is not a credit decision and no lender is bound by it.

It models the published order of assessment: CIF, then import duty at the EAC Common External Tariff band, then excise, then VAT on that subtotal, then IDF and RDL.

One genuine judgement call is exposed as a switch rather than hidden: whether IDF and RDL sit inside the VAT base. The default follows the published order, but practice varies by commodity and by how an agent lodges the entry. Reconcile against your actual entry.

Kenya is the only jurisdiction we treat as authoritative. Corridors terminating in Kampala, Kigali and Dar es Salaam are fully modelled for cost and transit — that is corridor data, not law — but we do not yet claim to cover Ugandan, Rwandan or Tanzanian regulation.

Uganda is the first extension, and it will not ship until it has a named maintainer, because a stale regulatory register is worse than an absent one.

Yes, after the first visit. A service worker caches the application, so any screen you have opened before will open again with no signal. Your saved work is on the device and needs no connection at all.

You can also install it from your browser menu and run it like an app.

Yes — white-labelling is built in, and KIFWA and KPA configurations already exist as working examples. A branded deployment changes the name, the palette and the attribution, while the method and the sources stay identical and visible.

Write to us if you want one configured.

No, and it is important that this is clear. There is no server, so nothing can be transmitted on your behalf. The tool captures the barrier properly at the moment it happens and formats it for the AfCFTA mechanism at tradebarriers.africa; you lodge it there.

The second half is quieter but may matter more: your own log adds up to what barriers are costing you in hours and dollars at specific points, which is the evidence an association or corridor authority can actually act on.