National Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has defended the government’s Ksh204.3 billion Safaricom share sale, saying the government will use legal channels to challenge parts of a High Court judgment that nullified the transaction.
Speaking in Kisumu on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, Mbadi said Treasury is studying the full judgment delivered a day earlier before determining its next legal steps.
“The National Treasury is studying the full judgment closely and will shortly set out, through the appropriate legal channels, the grounds of which we consider the court’s findings merit further judicial review,” Mbadi said.
The CS maintained that the government was satisfied that the transaction complied with the law and formed part of its broader strategy to unlock value from State assets.
“The National Treasury remains confident that the process followed the law and is in line with prudent financial management, coherent with the nation’s fiscal reality,” he added.
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Mbadi explains why government sold Safaricom stake
Mbadi said the divestiture was deliberately structured as a fiscal measure through which the government could unlock value from a State-held asset and channel resources towards national development.
He said the transaction went through both Cabinet and Parliament before implementation.
“The divestiture was conceived, developed, and presented to Cabinet and the National Assembly as a considered fiscal measure, structured to unlock value for the exchequer while safeguarding the strategic character of an institution that touches the daily lives of over 50 million Kenyans,” Mbadi said.
The Treasury chief’s defence comes barely 24 hours after a three-judge High Court bench declared the sale of the government’s 15 per cent stake in Safaricom to Vodacom unconstitutional, null and void.
What the High Court ruled
On Tuesday, September 15, Justices Francis Gikonyo, Roselyne Aburili and Tabitha Ouya found that the divestiture violated constitutional and statutory requirements.
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The court ordered the 15 per cent stake transferred to Vodacom to be restored to the Government of Kenya on behalf of the people. It also quashed approvals and actions connected to the transaction.
A central issue was public participation.
The judges found that the government had not subjected the proposed divestiture to adequate and meaningful public participation and that material information about the transaction had not been sufficiently disclosed to the public, Cabinet and Parliament.
The court also questioned the manner in which the transaction was presented, finding that it went beyond a straightforward disposal of government shares and had implications for control of Safaricom.
The deal involved the sale of 15 per cent of the government’s 35 per cent stake for about Ksh204.3 billion, with the State retaining a 20 per cent holding. A separate arrangement involving future dividend rights brought the overall transaction value to about Ksh244.5 billion.
