Ruto offers Kenya Airways to foreign investors for Sh155 billion

President William Ruto and his government have decided to offload national carrier Kenya Airways to foreign investors.

This has been revealed by the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury John Mbadi. According to CS Mbadi, the government will hand over the national carrier to foreigners who will pump in between Sh154.8 billion and Sh258 billion.

The CS claims that the government will float an international expression of interest (EOI) in a bid to get an investor.

“The new investor is expected to inject a minimum of Sh154.8 billion and up to Sh258 billion into the business. We shall be rolling out an international expression of interest to search for a strategic partner,” said CS Mbadi. The CS, however, did not announce when this bid will be opened.

“The government took up Sh63.1 billion which it is now servicing. The government then signed an on-lent agreement with KQ. This amount can be converted to equity once we firm up the onboarding of a strategic investor.”

This marks the second time that President Ruto is trying to sell off Kenya Airways. During a visit to the United States in mid December 2022, President Ruto and his delegation met with the top executives of the United States’ largest carrier Delta Air.

This was widely perceived by the public as a pitch by the new government to sell Kenya Airways to Delta Airlines. It followed public remarks by President Ruto that he was willing to sell KQ.

“I’m willing to sell the whole of Kenya Airways Plc. I’m not in the business of running an airline that just has a Kenyan flag, that’s not my business,” President Ruto had told Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington DC.

He had added that discussions with Delta were at a preliminary stage. “The government is looking for partnerships that will make Kenya Airways a profitable entity whatever that means, in whatever configuration, whatever form it takes.”

Incidentally, the latest efforts come in the wake of a deeply troubling financial year in which a majority of KQ’s widebody 787 Dreamliners have remained grounded over what the airline claims to be a “global shortage of parts”.

It is however not clear how the airline’s leadership was unable to foresee and develop mitigation strategies. The grounding of these planes has also been blamed as the reason why Kenya Airways is staring at record-breaking losses.

The airline slumped back into loss making territory in the first six months of the 2025 financial year with a net loss of Sh12.15 billion.

This was a sharp about turn from the record profit of Sh5.4 billion that the national carrier posted in the full year 2024, and the net profit of Sh513 million in the first six months of 2024.

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 Kenya Airways has been seeking for partners who can pump in money. In 2024, then chief executive officer Allan Kilavuka had placed the stake that was on offer to foreign investors at 49 percent.

“We are looking for an equity investor that can invest up to a maximum of 49 per cent,” Kilavuka had said. “This is the maximum because the rules and regulations in Kenya do not allow you to have a Airline Operating Certificate (AOC) if you have more than 50 per cent foreign ownership.”

As at December 2024, records showed that the government was the majority shareholder with a 48.90 per cent stake, followed by KQ Lenders Company 2017 Limited with a 38.09 per cent stake, Dutch airline KLM with a 7.76 per cent stake, Kenya Airways employees with a 2.44 per cent stake, while the remaining shares are spread across other 7 shareholders.