Kunaka, Charles

Person:
Kunaka, Charles

Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment

Author Name Variants

Kunaka, Charles, Kunaka, C.

Fields of Specialization

Transport, Trade

ORCID

0000-0002-0202-0342

Departments

Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment

Last updated:October 6, 2025

Biography

Charles Kunaka is a Lead Specialist on Connectivity, based at the World Bank Group offices in Singapore. He joined the World Bank in 2006 as Senior Transport Specialist and has since worked on numerous trade and transport facilitation, logistics and connectivity projects, both analytical and operational. Charles co-leads the Global Infrastructure Connectivity Alliance, a G20 initiative. Charles works on numerous projects in South Asia, East and Southern Africa and the ASEAN region. He is a task team leader of several investment operations among them the India Capacity Augmentation of National Waterway 1 Project, Accelerating Regional Integration in East African Community Project and the Great Lakes Trade Facilitation project. Charles is also involved in logistics-related analytical activities in several countries including Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Bosnia. Charles has published on several topics surrounding logistics and connectivity including the Trade and Transport Corridor Management Toolkit and the Quantitative Assessment of Road Transport Agreements. He has expertise on economic corridors, transport services and logistics services. Charles holds an MSc from Cranfield University and a PhD from University College London, both on transport economics and policy.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/38667

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Publication Search Results

Now showing1 - 10 of 19

The Path to a Multimodal Future in Eastern South Asia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-18) Nora, Erik; Kunaka, Charles; Nikore, Mitali
The eastern South Asia region (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal) has extensive networks of all the main modes of surface transport for the movement of goods, both within and between countries. However, goods transport in the region is heavily dependent on a single mode—road transportation—which accounts for about three-quarters of the market in India and Bangladesh and over 90 percent in Bhutan and Nepal. The regional road transportation system faces significant structural challenges that undermine its effectiveness, notably severe congestion and poor reliability. Multimodal transport is increasingly recognized in the region as a way of achieving seamless movement of freight. When combined with measures that synchronize and optimize the entire transportation chain, it can relieve congestion and decrease transit times by 40-50 percent. Many regional trade routes within eastern South Asia are long, exceeding 250 kilometers—a distance where rail and Inland Waterway Transport (IWT) have a competitive edge over road transport due to their lower costs and higher capacity for bulk shipments. This is particularly relevant given that mineral transportation, which is well-suited to these modes due to its bulk nature, constitutes a significant 67 percent of total cross-border trade flow in eastern South Asia. To better understand the economic benefits of improving multimodal transportation in eastern South Asia, the World Bank developed a detailed trade and transport model. The findings indicate that while both soft and hard measures are essential for creating a more efficient multimodal transport network, dismantling critical regulatory and policy barriers is three times more effective in enhancing the region’s trade potential. This paper focuses on the various dimensions of a multimodal freight transport system for eastern South Asia, examining the challenges that must be overcome to fully realize its potential.
Trading in Clusters and the Future of Small-Scale Trade in the Borderlands of the Great Lakes Region of Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-10-09) Bucekuderhwa, Célestin B.; Kunaka, Charles; Mvunga, Nyembezi; Ibale, Douglas Amuli
This paper presents a coping strategy that small-scale cross-border traders adopted in response to the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic and examines its impact. Using a cross-sectional data set of 1,159 traders from the borderlands of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, the paper assesses the impact of adopting the Cluster Trading Approach on trade outcomes, household income and poverty reduction. When applying a local average treatment effect approach, the findings reveal that adoption of the CTA causes at least 21 and 31 percentage point increases in traders' turnover and profit respectively. The household income analysis and poverty decomposition highlight an increase in income, even within the depth and severity of poverty. Thus, although access to capital is important for small-scale cross-border traders joining a cluster according to the literature, the results show that the level of capital is less important for income increase once there. As the results are robust to competing explanations and heterogeneity of the sample, the paper concludes that the Cluster Trading Approach is a poverty-reducing strategy and discusses the challenges for its sustainability.
A Framework for Enhancing Intra-regional Connectivity in the Horn of Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-21) Derudder, Ben; Kunaka, Charles
This background paper systematically maps and assesses the connectivity of cities in the Horn of Africa (HoA) and uses the results to proposes a number of policy perspectives on how to strategically boost connectivity in different parts of the region. Analytically, this is achieved through network analysis of the directness, the diversity, topology and the density of HoA cities’ transport infrastructure connections. Crucially, network analysis allows proxying HoA cities’ potential to participate in value chains at various geographical scales and identifying key areas of possible intervention. Results can guide institutional and governance measures that can be taken to influence connectivity as a whole and for specific cities and transport corridors in particular. The output can thus help determine the interventions that are needed to tackle bottlenecks in corridors, addressing infrastructure, policy and regulatory constraints. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 outlines the rationale for an analysis of inter-urban connectivity in general and its linkages with the broader topic of regional integration and the economic geographies of the HoA in particular. Section 3 discusses our analytical framework, while Section 4 discusses the results. The paper is concluded with a discussion of key policy perspectives in section 5.
Connecting to Thrive: Challenges and Opportunities of Transport Integration in Eastern South Asia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-03-09) Herrera Dappe, Matias; Kunaka, Charles; Herrera Dappe, Matias; Kunaka, Charles; Abate, Megersa; Alam, Muneeza Mehmood; Araghi, Yashar; Coello, Barbara; de Jong, Gerard; Hatzfeldt, Gaia; Kouwenhoven, Marco; Lebrand, Mathilde; Mittal, Rachit; Pratap, Mayank; Sharma, Manish; Sieber, Niklas; Skorzus, Roman Constantin \; van Eck, Gijs; Van Patten, Diana
Because trucks in Bangladesh and India are not allowed to operate across the border, cargo is transloaded at the border, and Indian trucks traveling between northeast India and the rest of India must go around Bangladesh through the Siliguri Corridor, which significantly increases transport and trade costs. This lack of integration means that it is more costly for Bangladesh and India to trade with each other than for either of them to trade with Europe. As a result, bilateral trade represents only about 10 percent of Bangladesh’s trade and a mere 1 percent of India’s trade. This book presents a collection of innovative technical analyses that show what is needed to achieve seamless connectivity in the region. The report explores the extent to which the Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal Motor Vehicle Agreement (MVA) supports the cross-border operation of road transport services and identifies the gaps in the agreement that need to be addressed to improve its effectiveness. It assesses the potential shift of freight traffic to new routes and modes in eastern India and Bangladesh once the MVA is implemented and the potential impact of the MVA on wages, employment, and income in Bangladesh and India. It explores how the local impacts of a regional corridor could be enhanced in rural areas by improving access to markets along the corridors and how women’s participation in export-oriented agriculture value chains could be improved to allow women to take advantage of improved regional connectivity. "Connecting to Thrive" will be of interest to policy makers, private sector practitioners, and academics with an interest in regional connectivity in eastern South Asia.
Eight Emerging Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Small-Scale Cross-Border Trade in the Great Lakes Region
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-02-17) Mvunga, Nyembezi; Kunaka, Charles
Small-scale cross-border trade (SSCBT) is a defining feature of the economies of the borderlands of the Great Lakes Region (GLR). It is an important source of income and a necessary channel to access goods and services that have enabled vulnerable households to increase their resilience against outside shocks and escape extreme poverty. SSCBT enhances food security and contributes to improved stability in this conflict-afflicted region. However, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has resulted in the restricted movement of people, goods, and services across borders in the GLR since March 2020, has greatly affected informal cross-border trade and traders. Its persistence has also hindered the progress that countries in this region have made toward improving the trading environment. Evidence from the World Bank’s Great Lakes Trade Facilitation Project (GLTFP), which has been undergoing implementation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Uganda, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) since 2015, highlights to a greater extent how the pandemic has erased some of the progress that countries in the region have made toward improving the livelihoods of their citizens and the trading environment. The objective of this note is to provide evidence of some of the emerging effects of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on SSCBT in the GLR. Because the effects of the pandemic are still evolving, this note summarizes emerging patterns that can inform discussions on policy response and the design of measures to lessen the effect of the pandemic and help protect the future of small-scale trade in the region. This note presents the emerging effects of the pandemic in the region as evidenced by the GLTFP, and is followed by recommendations on focus areas for policy makers.
Quantitative Analysis of Road Transport Agreements (QuARTA)
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-04-13) Tanase, Virginia; Kunaka, Charles; Latrille, Pierre; Krausz, Peter
Road freight transport is indispensable to international economic cooperation and foreign trade. Across all continents, it is commonly used for short and medium distances and in long distance haulage when minimizing time is important. In all instances governments play a critical role in ensuring the competitive advantage of private sector operators. Countries often have many opportunities to minimize the physical or administrative barriers that increase costs, take measures to enhance the attractiveness and competitiveness of road transport, or generally nurture the integral role of international road freight transport in the global trade logistics industry. Road freight transport is critical to domestic and international trade. It is the dominant mode of transport for overland movement of trade traffic, carrying more than 80 percent of traffic in most regions. Generally, nearly all trade traffic is carried by road at some point. Therefore, the cost and quality of road transport services is of critical importance to trade competitiveness of countries and regions within countries. In fact, road transport is fundamental to modern international division of labor and supply-chain management.
Connectivity Along Overland Corridors of the Belt and Road Initiative
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10) Derudder, Ben; Liu, Xingjian; Kunaka, Charles
The six land corridors that are the ‘Belt’ part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) connect more than sixty countries. As the initiative progresses, policy makers, analysts and researchers are trying to answer a few open questions of which the most common are: How can a country best benefit from the BRI? How should projects be prioritized and sequenced? What opportunities emerge as a result of participating in the initiative? The authors use a network economics approach to answer some of these questions and others. Our hypothesis is that the ability of countries to maximize the benefits of BRI will depend on the position of each country in the new connectivity maps that are emerging. Ultimately, an initiative such as the BRI will change the way economic centers, as the most productive nodes in each country, are connected. Productivity, competition, market opportunities, and transport and logistics costs are all likely to be impacted. However, the magnitude of the effects will depend on where along the Belt corridors a city is located relative to all other countries and economic centers. Ultimately, the difference in outcomes will depend on whether a center intermediates trade flows in the network or serves as an end node that generates inbound and outbound flows. Centers that are not well connected in the new BRI maps may not experience much positive impact. Emphasis should therefore be on the weak links within the networks.
Moving Forward: Connectivity and Logistics to Sustain Bangladesh’s Success
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-11-14) Lebrand, Mathilde; Herrera Dappe, Matías; Weisskopf, Nora; Kunaka, Charles
The erosion of its competitiveness is raising concerns about the sustainability of Bangladesh's growth model based on exports of ready-made garments. To safeguard its comparative advantage in ready-made garments and diversify its exports basket, Bangladesh needs to increase its competitiveness. Improving logistics performance is an important lever with which to do so. Moving Forward: Connectivity and Logistics to Sustain Bangladesh's Success presents a comprehensive assessment of logistics performance and its main determinants. It analyzes freight demand at a spatially disaggregated level, quantifies logistics costs, including the costs of externalities, looks at the factors that determine the stock and quality of infrastructure, and examines the incentives to provide logistics services of a certain type and quality and to charge the observed prices. It also quantifies the potential impacts of removing transport and logistics inefficiencies on Bangladesh's exports and economic geography using a spatial general equilibrium model. Bangladesh's congested, unreliable, and unsophisticated logistics system imposes high costs on the economy. Making it efficient requires a holistic system-wide approach that is based on a comprehensive strategy; improves the quality, capacity, and management of infrastructure; improves the quality and integration of logistics services; and achieves seamless regional connectivity. Moving Forward will be of interest to policy makers, private sector practitioners, and academics with an interest in the performance of Bangladesh's transport and logistics sectors.
Eurasian Cities : New Realities along the Silk Road
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-09-07) Deichmann, Uwe; Coulibaly, Souleymane; Dillinger, William R.; Heroiu, Marcel Ionescu; Kessides, Ioannis N.; Saslavsky, Daniel; Kunaka, Charles
Eurasian cities, unique in the global spatial landscape, were part of the world's largest experiment in urban development. The challenges they now face because of their history offer valuable lessons to urban planners and policy makers across the world from places that are still urbanizing to those already urbanized. More than three-quarters of the built environment in Eurasian cities was developed after 1945 in a centralized fashion. Central planners could implement whatever they considered good practice planning solutions, and Eurasia's cities became their drawing boards. The central planners got a lot right easy access to public transportation, district heating networks, almost universal access to water systems, and socially integrated neighborhoods. At the same time, they failed to acknowledge the importance of markets and individual choice in shaping sustainable and congenial places for people to live in. From a spatial point of view, it became clear that many Eurasian cities were developed in places where they should not have been. To populate sparsely inhabited territory, Soviet planners pushed urban development toward the heart of Siberia. Many of the resulting cities had no rural hinterland to rely on for daily food needs and had to depend on subsidized goods and services. Many Eurasian cities face an overdeveloped public service infrastructure that is hard to maintain and upgrade. Facing an economic downturn in the 1990s and lacking experience in decentralized urban management, many local authorities struggled to run these services. Public transport ridership fell in most cities, with more people commuting in private vehicles. Recycling networks disappeared, and soaring consumption overwhelmed solid waste management systems. District heating systems became large energy sieves hard to run and maintain without subsidies. Plaguing water systems are large shares of nonrevenue water, and low tariffs do not ensure the cost recovery needed for upgrades and repairs. This book discusses all five of these issues rethinking, planning, connecting, greening, and financing in more detail. It seeks to analyze the key challenges created by central planning, outline how these challenges were addressed in the transition years, and identify some steps Eurasian cities should take to chart a sustainable development path for themselves. The book also shows how some of the most progressive cities in the region have been tackling these problems and, in doing so, shedding the last vestiges of the socialist economy.
Trade and Transport Corridor Management Toolkit
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-05-07) Kunaka, Charles; Carruthers, Robin
Trade and transport corridors—major routes that facilitate the movement of people and goods between regions and between countries—have existed for millennia. They enable regions and countries to offer high-capacity transport systems and services that reduce trade and transport costs by creating economies of scale. Regional corridors are particularly important to landlocked countries, often providing the only overland routes to regional and international markets. Despite a long and complex history, guidance is often lacking on how to design, determine the components to include, and analyze the impact of corridor projects. The Trade and Transport Corridor Management Toolkit fills this void. The Toolkit synthesizes the experiences of the World Bank and other development agencies in assessing, designing, implementing, and evaluating the impact of trade and transport corridor projects. It saves project developers the task of looking for the best available tools and ensures greater consistency to facilitate comparison and benchmarking. The Toolkit will also be of immense value to policy makers in provincial and national governments as well as regional economic institutions, for several reasons: • Corridors affect the space economy of countries; they are best developed with clear estimates of the spatial impacts that can be expected. • A corridor system has multiple components, including infrastructure (roads, railways, ports), transport and logistics services, and regulations; it is important to appreciate the linkages between them, particularly as the overall performance of a corridor is determined by the weakest component. • Many parties with varying interests and motivations have a stake in corridor development. The Toolkit argues for their full participation in corridor development processes and operations. The best functioning modern corridors in the world did not happen by accident; they are often the results of coordinated development and cooperation over many years. The general principles outlined in this Toolkit should help project teams, government officials, logistics service providers, and the trade community to better appreciate both the importance of good corridor project design and the challenges of, and possibilities from, improving corridor performance.