The Court of Appeal’s decision to reopen a dispute over KenGen’s Sh2.5 billion carbon credits tender has added to growing scrutiny of procurement, recruitment and management practices at the State controlled electricity producer.
The appellate court on July 10, 2026, ordered the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board to hear afresh a challenge filed by Sintmond Group Limited over its disqualification from the proposed sale of 6.38 million carbon credits.
KenGen had awarded the tender to a joint venture between Munja Trading Limited and Marwil Energy Holding after removing Sintmond during the due diligence stage on grounds that the company had not demonstrated sufficient experience or capacity to handle a transaction of that size.
The Court of Appeal overturned an earlier High Court decision and directed that the matter be placed before a differently constituted procurement review panel.
The judges found that due diligence should be used to verify information already required under tender documents and should not become an opportunity for procuring entities to introduce new evaluation conditions after bids have been submitted.
The carbon credits dispute will now return to the procurement review board for the fourth time, further delaying a transaction that KenGen has presented as part of its plan to increase revenue from activities outside electricity generation.
The repeated litigation has raised fresh questions about how one of Kenya’s most valuable public corporations is being managed under the Kenya Kwanza administration, particularly as other audit and parliamentary findings point to weaknesses in recruitment, asset management and internal controls.
KenGen has six registered clean energy projects with more than 6.38 million carbon credits available for sale, generated from the Olkaria geothermal plants, the Tana and Kiambere hydroelectric projects and the Ngong Wind Power project.
At an estimated value of Sh2.5 billion, the credits represent a major public asset, making the integrity of the procurement process a matter of direct public interest.
The carbon credits dispute is not the only matter that has placed KenGen’s current leadership under scrutiny.
In November 2025, the National Assembly’s Public Investments Committee questioned KenGen managers over the recruitment of employees without publicly advertising the available positions.
An Auditor General’s review found that KenGen recruited 10 employees, including four graduate engineers, during the 2020 and 2021 financial year without open advertising, contrary to the company’s human resources policy and constitutional principles requiring fairness and equal opportunity in public employment.
The following financial year, KenGen recruited another 28 graduate engineers from an internal database instead of opening the positions to all qualified Kenyans.
KenGen Managing Director Peter Njenga told Parliament that the company needed to deploy engineers quickly for geothermal drilling projects in Ethiopia and Djibouti and could not wait for a longer recruitment exercise.
Members of Parliament rejected that explanation, warning that recruitment from an internal database locked out qualified Kenyans who did not know that vacancies existed and created room for favouritism.
Concerns about favouritism have been strengthened by official figures showing that two ethnic communities hold a disproportionately large share of jobs at KenGen.
While appearing before Parliament in June 2025, Njenga acknowledged that Kikuyu and Kalenjin employees together accounted for approximately 44 percent of the company’s workforce.
Figures presented to lawmakers also showed that the two communities received a large share of promotions issued during the preceding five years, with Kikuyu employees accounting for 19.4 percent and Kalenjin employees accounting for 15.6 percent of those promoted.
Njenga told MPs that KenGen was taking steps to correct the imbalance, but the figures have continued to fuel accusations that tribalism and political patronage are becoming entrenched inside the power producer.
The recruitment findings are particularly serious because they involve a public corporation operating under Article 232 of the Constitution, which requires appointments and promotions to reflect fair competition, merit and Kenya’s diversity.
Questions have also been raised over KenGen’s management of major public assets.
The Auditor General questioned delays in transferring a Sh5.3 billion substation asset to the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company despite the infrastructure having been completed and used for several years.
Parliament was told that the Olkaria IV and Olkaria I additional units substations had been operated by KETRACO without a completed transfer agreement, although KenGen later said the matter had been resolved after the National Treasury assumed the associated loan and a novation agreement was signed in June 2024.
Lawmakers also examined impairments amounting to approximately Sh5.9 billion, including the complete impairment of the Sh2.1 billion Muhoroni Power Station after its power purchase agreement expired without a completed renewal.
Taken together, the carbon credits litigation, recruitment breaches, ethnic imbalance and questions over multibillion shilling assets have created the picture of a company facing a widening governance crisis.
Critics now accuse the Kenya Kwanza administration of allowing KenGen to be mismanaged and exposed to looting through disputed procurement processes, politically influenced employment and weak oversight of valuable public assets.
The available court and audit records do not establish that specific KenGen officials have personally stolen public funds, but they show repeated failures capable of creating opportunities for corruption, favouritism and loss of public value.
KenGen’s leadership has continued announcing ambitious plans, including proposals to expand generation capacity to 5,500 megawatts and prepare the company to operate Kenya’s proposed nuclear power plants.
Nyakundi Report recently questioned whether the company had provided enough information on project financing, implementation timelines and the possible debt burden that would eventually fall on taxpayers.
The publication also questioned whether an institution facing procurement disputes and governance concerns had earned the public trust required to manage a nuclear programme likely to cost hundreds of billions of shillings.
KenGen reported revenue of Sh56.09 billion for the financial year ending June 2025 and remains central to Kenya’s electricity supply, generating most of its power from geothermal and hydroelectric sources.
Its strategic importance means that procurement failures, tribal hiring and weak management cannot be treated as minor internal problems.
The fresh hearing before the procurement review board will determine whether Sintmond was lawfully disqualified and whether KenGen improperly introduced new requirements during the due diligence stage.
It will not, by itself, resolve the wider questions surrounding KenGen’s leadership, recruitment practices and management of public assets.
Those questions now require independent investigation by Parliament, the Auditor General, the Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission and other oversight bodies to establish whether KenGen is merely suffering from poor management or is being systematically captured and looted under the cover of procurement, recruitment and ambitious energy projects.