Safaricom at a Crossroads: Why Halting the KSh 244 Billion Stake Sale Is Now a National Imperative
Parliamentary hearings, market experts and LSK now echo concerns that the Safaricom stake sale is undervalued, opaque and rushed. Kenya must halt the KSh244B deal, publish independent valuations and open competitive bidding to protect long-term public value.
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Kenya’s Parliament has now vindicated the central argument in my earlier article “Selling Tomorrow for Today”: this Safaricom stake sale is not just a pricing dispute, but a structural, governance and policy failure that must be halted and redesigned.
Parliament has moved the debate
The first article warned that Kenya was acting like a country closing shop tomorrow by selling 15% of Safaricom at KSh 34 plus heavily discounted future dividends, in a hurried, opaque negotiated deal. Parliamentary hearings have now taken those concerns mainstream: MPs, led by Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro, the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), NSE and market practitioners have all questioned the valuation, process and long-term fiscal logic of the transaction.
The joint Finance and Public Debt & Privatisation Committees have heard submissions that:
- The deal is “grossly undervalued”, potentially transferring tens of billions from taxpayers to the buyer.
- The structure amounts to a blank cheque to the buyer, including discounted future dividends and regulatory concessions.
- The sale design violates the spirit of competitive, transparent privatisation expected under Kenya’s own laws and global best practice.
In essence, the centre of gravity in Parliament has shifted away from “whether to sell” towards “how this sale must be fundamentally rethought”—exactly the distinction the original commentary argued for.
The valuation gap is now undeniable
Where the first article relied mainly on Standard Investment Bank’s fair-value estimate and broad global lessons, the record now includes a more detailed and diverse valuation challenge:
- The government still anchors its case on KSh 34 per share and a total package of about KSh 244.5 billion (KSh 204.3 billion for 15% plus KSh 40.2 billion for future dividends), portraying this as a premium to Safaricom’s then-market price.
- MPs like Ndindi Nyoro argue that using a depressed NSE price as a benchmark when 16 billion shares were immobilised by the buyer is, at best, “incompetent” and, at worst, a form of price manipulation that suppressed the market in advance of the deal.
- Independent valuation work, including SIB’s FY26 update, shows intrinsic value per share above the deal price, implying the 15% block would be worth significantly more under a properly structured, competitive sale.
Parliamentary submissions have also highlighted that once the discounted dividend strip and alleged licence extensions at a discount are factored in, Kenya may be giving away well over KSh 100 billion in long-term value for short-term cash. This is precisely the inter-generational trade-off “Selling Tomorrow for Today” warned against.
Process and governance: from “illusion of participation” to hard evidence
The sequel moment is that many stakeholders now see what was described earlier as an “illusion of participation” in concrete institutional terms:
- Public participation has formally closed, but submissions show that the core deal terms were pre-packaged long before Kenyans were invited to comment, turning hearings into a rubber-stamping risk rather than genuine co-design.
- LSK has urged Parliament to reject the proposal outright, citing lack of transparency, inadequate independent valuation and a failure to channel a significant portion of the sale through the NSE to protect minority investors and deepen local ownership.
- The NSE itself, while not opposing divestiture, has emphasised that any sale should be executed via its block trading platform, with proper price discovery and disclosure—implicitly criticising the current off-market bilateral structure.
Parliament has thus become the arena where opacity is being translated into specific questions: Who authorised licence discounts? When did the CA board meet? Why no open, global bidding? Why immobilise a massive volume of shares ahead of pricing?
Voices from the ecosystem: it’s no longer just a fiscal story
Another notable development is that Safaricom dealers and the Law Society of Kenya have joined the chorus, widening the critique beyond fiscal technocrats and capital-market insiders:
- Dealer networks fear that a concentrated foreign owner may drive margin-squeezing, restructuring or distribution changes that could put thousands of small businesses at risk.
- LSK’s stance foregrounds constitutional issues, including public finance prudence and the duty to maximise value when disposing of strategic state assets.
This ecosystem response reinforces a core point in your original article: Safaricom is not just another stock; it is a systemic platform whose ownership and governance have economy-wide implications.
Why the core prescription still stands: halt, open up, redesign
In light of these parliamentary discussions and stakeholder recommendations, the sequel argument is simple: the policy prescription in “Selling Tomorrow for Today” has aged well and now has institutional backing.
The path forward remains:
- Immediate halt of the current bilateral deal at KSh 34 plus discounted dividends and concessions, until Parliament has fully interrogated all terms and alternatives.
- Independent, fully disclosed valuations by multiple advisors, tabled before Parliament and the public, to reset the value conversation away from a single, politically convenient number.
- Competitive, international bidding and an NSE tranche, in line with global best practice and Kenya’s own privatisation aspirations, to ensure Kenya does not sell a strategic asset at a discount and in the dark.
- Serious consideration of structural options—demerger, dual listing, diversified strategic ownership—before any large sell-down, so that the country extracts full going-concern value from Safaricom.
Parliament, LSK, market professionals, dealers and citizens are now converging on the same core message—this is not how a country that plans to be here in 50 years sells one of its crown jewels.
Kenya still has time to stop this deal, reopen the process and build a Safaricom divestiture template that future generations will thank us for, rather than question.
