Kenya’s Court of Appeal leaves the Safaricom sale void

Kenya’s Court of Appeal leaves the Safaricom sale void

The State sold 15% of Safaricom to Vodacom and completed in July. The High Court has unwound the sale, and the appellate court will not pause that judgment while the appeal is pending.

October 17, 2026

The State sold 15% of Safaricom to Vodacom and completed in July. The High Court has unwound the sale, and the appellate court will not pause that judgment while the appeal is pending.

What happened

On 13 October 2026 the Court of Appeal dismissed, for lack of merit, applications by the Government of Kenya and Vodacom to stay the High Court’s judgment of 15 September. That judgment, by Justices Francis Gikonyo, Roselyn Aburili and Teresia Wanjiku Ouya, declared the State’s sale of 6,009,814,200 Safaricom shares to Vodafone Kenya Limited, a Vodacom subsidiary, unconstitutional, null and void. It quashed Sessional Paper No. 3 of 2025 and related approvals, and ordered the shares restored to the Government, as reported by The Standard.

The transaction completed on 6 July 2026. The Government received KSh204.3bn for the shares at KSh34 each and a further KSh40.2bn in lieu of future dividends on its retained holding, about KSh244.5bn in all. The Standard puts the associated foreign-currency inflow at roughly US$1.56bn.

The petition, led by Tony Gachoka, challenged the legality of the disposal, public participation, the valuation and the approval procedure. The Government argued that reversing a completed sale would be complex, would affect investors and foreign-exchange flows, and raised questions about Section 87A of the Public Finance Management Act and Parliament’s role.

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Why it matters

Analysis. The significance lies in the stage, not only the size. This sale was negotiated, approved, paid for and completed. Its vulnerability sat in the public-law process behind the seller’s authority to sell, rather than in the share purchase agreement. Buyers of State-held assets anywhere in the region now have a recent, high-value example of why the seller’s constitutional and statutory process deserves the same diligence as title to the shares.

What happens next

The Treasury and Vodacom have said they will pursue their appeals. As reported by Innovation Village, no published order yet deals with repayment of the KSh244.5bn, which the Treasury has described as non-refundable. Until the appeal is determined, the High Court judgment stands. No hearing date had been reported at the time of writing.

Photo: Nairobi123 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (illustrative).

The Meridian Editorial Team

Andrew U. — Editorial Director | Damilare A. — Intelligence Director | Amaka Nwoye — Senior Legal Research Analyst | Salome Mensah — Market Intelligence Analyst | May Ndlovu — Editorial Researcher | K.K. Lawal — Senior Correspondent | The Meridian’s editorial team brings experience across West African legal markets, commercial law, market intelligence and structured research. Our standard is simple: evidence first, independent judgement, and analysis grounded in how legal work happens in practice.