Company profile
Know what the corridor actually costs you.
Corridor logistics intelligence for Kenya and the EAC. Cost per tonne-kilometre, landed cost, demurrage exposure and every regulatory deadline that applies to you — computed in your browser, sourced and dated, and never sent anywhere.
The practice, in numbers
Every figure on this page is counted from the same registers the tools run on, at the moment you loaded it. None of them is typed.
Decision support, not professional advice — and honest about exactly where that line runs. See .
The corridor, honestly
East Africa trades on some of the world's most expensive roads. The cost is not anecdote — it is measured, published, and still roughly double international best practice. Each figure below carries its source and the date it was published.
Against roughly 8% in Asian economies — a competitiveness tax on everything the region makes.
Border crossing fell from about 2.5 days in 2013 to roughly 6 hours under the one-stop border post and Single Customs Territory — yet the corridor still carries about 66% of East African cargo.
Plus weighbridge stops, border formalities and clearance delays — friction priced into every tonne-kilometre.
Berths 19B, 23 and 24 will add 1.4M TEU of capacity; the terminal operating system is about 40% upgraded and gate automation about 60% complete at gates 23–24.
Transit is the contestable cargo: it chooses its corridor. Imports were 78% of Q3 2025 throughput.
Mombasa Port Community Charter targets: cargo dwell from a 96-hour baseline toward 48; truck port-to-Malaba from 84 hours toward 36; the SGR Mombasa–Nairobi train trip from 84 hours toward 36.
Where the money leaks
The headline freight rate is only the beginning. Four cost layers hide between the quoted rate and the true landed cost — and each one has a calculator here.
Duty and levies, in a strict order
The published order of assessment runs customs value (CIF) → import duty at the EAC Common External Tariff band → excise on CIF plus duty → VAT at 16% → Import Declaration Fee at 2.5% of CIF → Railway Development Levy at 2% of CIF. Small judgement calls — like whether IDF and RDL sit inside the VAT base — move real money.
Demurrage and port exposure
The 2025 port tariff repriced storage and handling; clearance delays convert directly into demurrage, and the meter runs daily whether the delay was yours or not.
Regulatory deadlines that arrive unannounced
An operator planning against a hardcoded status can be preparing for an obligation that no longer exists — or missing one that does. The register below computes each instrument's status from today's date rather than storing it.
Modal comparisons that lie
Published corridor tariffs are line haul only. First and last mile, lift charges and ICD storage must be added before a road-versus-rail comparison is honest — and the obvious modal choice can invert once they are.
Two tracks. Which side of the problem are you on?
Move · Operational diagnostics
For operations already running. Find the cost, the leak and the deadline.
Build · Greenfield navigation
For operations being set up. Licensing, structure, people and place.
The Corridor Health Index
8 domains, weighted, 32 questions in total. Each answer scores 0–4; a domain's maturity is points over the maximum available on the questions you actually scored — skipping lowers the confidence figure, not the score.
| Domain | Weight | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| Customs & clearance | 16% | 4 |
| Fleet & transport | 14% | 4 |
| Port & ICD efficiency | 14% | 4 |
| Cost & margin | 13% | 4 |
| Regulatory & safety | 12% | 4 |
| Documentation | 11% | 4 |
| Corridor & network | 10% | 4 |
| Financial health | 10% | 4 |
| Total | 100% | 32 |
The full scoring formula, including how an unanswered domain is handled, is set out in .
Benchmarks and the register
9 corridors are benchmarked, struck as at 2 August 2026; each band carries its derivation, payload assumption and provenance on screen. Benchmarks decay, and the product treats that as a fact rather than an embarrassment — anything older than six months fails the build. Passing the build is not the same as true this week: your actual entry, contract and carrier tariff govern.
12 instruments are tracked against their effective dates, of which 10 are in force today. Status is computed from today's date, never stored — a hardcoded status is how a product asks whether you are ready for an obligation that lapsed eight months ago.
Privacy by architecture
We cannot see your numbers, because there is nowhere for them to go. Every calculation runs in this browser; every diagnostic is stored on this device. The content security policy blocks every off-origin request — which is also why the site ships no web fonts and no icon CDN — and you can verify it in your browser's network tab.
The honest corollary is that nothing can be recovered for you either. Export what matters: every tool that computes a result produces a board-ready PDF, including this page.
What this cannot do
It is decision support, not professional advice, and does not replace a licensed customs agent, an advocate or an accountant. It is authoritative on Kenyan regulation only — corridors terminating in Kampala, Kigali or Dar es Salaam are modelled for cost and transit, but the law of those jurisdictions is not covered. It cannot see your actual entry, contract or carrier tariff, so every figure is only as good as what you typed. And it does not broker freight, lend, or move money, by design — the position is advisory, with no balance-sheet interest in the answer.
Working with Kanda
- Measure. Run the corridor diagnostic, the landed-cost engine or the demurrage exposure check — free, in-browser, offline-capable. Export the PDF; the output is yours.
- Reconcile. Bring your actual entry, contract and carrier tariff. The indicative figures are reconciled against your real transactions and the leaks worth fixing first are isolated.
- Advise. Advisory mandates on corridor strategy, licensing and greenfield build — capital stack with DSCR, structure across jurisdictions, people and place.
Choose “Save as PDF” as the destination in the print dialog.