Kenya’s Court of Appeal has cleared the path for the government to proceed with the planned sale of a 15 percent stake in Safaricom to South Africa’s Vodacom, dissolving the interim court orders that had brought the multibillion-shilling transaction to a standstill in recent months.
The deal carries a price tag of approximately Sh204 billion, with the proceeds earmarked for two of Kenya’s key financial vehicles — the National Infrastructure Fund and the Sovereign Wealth Fund — both intended to mobilise capital for the country’s long-term development agenda.
The road to this ruling has been anything but smooth. In March, a High Court judge suspended the transaction after two Kenyan citizens filed a petition citing concerns over data sovereignty — specifically, what happens to the sensitive personal and financial data Safaricom holds on millions of subscribers — as well as whether ordinary Kenyans had been given sufficient opportunity to weigh in before the deal was announced.
The legal hurdles multiplied in May when former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka entered the fray, filing a separate petition that questioned whether the sale was constitutionally sound. A High Court bench reviewed all the outstanding objections and chose to maintain the suspension, noting that significant questions around data sovereignty and broader legal issues had yet to be satisfactorily resolved.
Amid the court proceedings, the National Assembly had moved to legitimise the transaction on the legislative front. In April, MPs approved the government’s partial divestiture from Safaricom, authorising the State to reduce its shareholding through the Nairobi Securities Exchange’s Block Trade Platform — a specialised mechanism built to handle large-scale, negotiated equity trades outside the normal open-market process.
With the Court of Appeal now lifting the suspension, the transaction can move forward unless another legal challenge is lodged. For Vodacom, securing a 15 percent stake in one of Africa’s most profitable telcos and mobile-money operators would represent a major strategic win in East Africa’s fiercely competitive telecommunications landscape.
The prolonged legal battle has thrown into sharp relief a wider debate in Kenya about transparency, public participation, and the future of data governance as the government looks to monetise state assets in the digital era. Even with the courts having spoken, the data sovereignty question may well resurface as the deal moves towards completion.
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