Ten high-profile disputes against Kenya’s Competition Authority have been frozen since September 2025, after the Competition Tribunal lost the quorum it needs to hear appeals. Among the cases now stuck in limbo is Koko Networks’ challenge to a competition ruling over its exclusive fuel-supply arrangement with Vivo Energy — a case whose outcome now matters to almost nobody still running the company, because Koko itself collapsed into administration months ago.
Julius Mutua, the tribunal’s secretary and chief executive, laid out the scale of the problem in a letter dated February 19, 2026, addressed to Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi, according to reporting by Business Daily. The tribunal’s chairperson and one member had their terms expire on September 16 and July 13, 2025, respectively, leaving only three sitting members and no chair. Mutua warned that the vacancy had undermined the institution’s credibility and exposed businesses to prolonged uncertainty and potential economic loss.
Who The Paralysis Affects
The stalled docket reads like a cross-section of Kenya’s corporate disputes over the past two years. Carrefour owner Majid Al Futtaim Hypermarkets is appealing a combined Sh1.108 billion fine tied to allegations it abused its bargaining power over suppliers Pwani Oil Products and Woodlands Company. Guaranty Trust Bank Kenya is contesting a Sh33.18 million penalty for what the regulator called misleading conduct in handling credit facilities for ASL Limited. Steelmakers Corrugated Sheets Limited and Brollo Kenya Limited are also waiting on appeals from a price-fixing investigation, alongside cases involving the Rural and Urban Private Hospitals Association of Kenya, Vivo Energy Kenya, and an individual litigant, Joseph Sumba.
Koko’s case sits apart from the rest because the underlying company barely exists anymore. Koko Networks entered administration in February 2026 after the Kenyan government declined to issue the carbon-credit authorisation the bioethanol cooking-fuel company needed to keep subsidising its products, a dispute that forced the layoff of more than 700 workers, according to Kenyans.co.ke and Wikipedia’s account of the collapse. PwC administrators Muniu Thoithi and George Weru now control what remains of the business. That an appeal over an exclusivity arrangement with Vivo Energy is still technically pending before a tribunal that cannot hear it says as much about the state of Kenyan competition enforcement as it does about Koko’s specific dispute. Neither Koko’s administrators nor Vivo Energy has commented publicly on the stalled appeal.
A Tribunal With a History of Consequential Rulings
The paralysis is striking precisely because the tribunal had recently taken on weightier work. In July 2025, it dismissed a cluster of appeals from major steel manufacturers — Devki Steel Mills, Tononoka Rolling Mills, Accurate Steel Mills, Blue Nile Wire Products, and Nail and Steel Products — upholding the competition authority’s findings on coordinated pricing and output restrictions. It had also handled Majid Al Futtaim before: a 2021 buyer-power ruling against the retailer was later overturned by the High Court in May 2024, a reversal that raised its own questions about how far the regulator’s draft guidelines could stretch.
That track record is why the current vacancy carries more weight than a routine appointments delay. Kenya’s Competition Tribunal exists precisely to test whether the Competition Authority’s enforcement decisions can withstand scrutiny, giving aggrieved companies 30 days to challenge a ruling before a body empowered to uphold, vary, or set it aside entirely. Without a functioning tribunal, that check simply does not exist, and companies fined or restricted by the regulator have nowhere to turn.
The stakes are about to get considerably higher. Diageo’s Sh388.2 billion sale of East African Breweries Limited to Japan’s Asahi Group is still awaiting Kenyan regulatory approval after more than a year under review, with the Competition Authority proposing conditions — including a Sh15.5 billion reserve fund and reserved retail shelf space for rival brands — that Diageo and Asahi have rejected as unprecedented. If that dispute ends up before the tribunal, as CAK cases often do, it would land in an institution that currently cannot hear anything at all.
What Comes Next
The last substantive chairperson, Daniel Ochieng Ogola, was appointed in September 2020, and no successor has been named more than a year after his term lapsed. Mutua’s letter puts the responsibility squarely on the National Treasury and Economic Planning ministry to fill the seat, but no timeline for an appointment has been made public. Until that happens, businesses like Koko — even ones that no longer meaningfully operate — remain stuck with unresolved regulatory findings on the books, and Kenya’s broader reputation as a market where competition disputes get adjudicated promptly takes the hit.
The situation extends beyond Kenya’s fintech and payments sector: Kenya’s competition authority has separately been an active dealmaker in the region, clearing Moniepoint’s acquisition of a majority stake in Sumac Microfinance Bank and Nedbank’s $855 million takeover of NCBA, underscoring how much cross-border deal activity now depends on the same regulatory machinery currently missing a functioning appeals body. Nairobi’s growing profile as a financial-services hub, reinforced by events like the Africa Fintech & Banking Summit heading to the city later this year, makes a credible, fully staffed competition tribunal less of a bureaucratic footnote and more of a precondition for the deal flow Kenya is actively courting.
