Kenya’s High Court will hear a legal challenge to the planned expansion of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on June 23, after a judge certified the petition as urgent and ordered all parties to prepare for an inter partes hearing within days.
Justice Gregory Mutai issued the directions on June 19, instructing that the petition filed by the Consumers Federation of Kenya and its accompanying application be served on all respondents and interested parties by email. The judge pointed to the public weight of the matter as the reason for the speed. “The petition and motion concern a matter of great public importance and deserve urgent consideration,” he said. Respondents must file and serve their replies by June 22, a day before the 11:30am hearing.
What COFEK is arguing
The case pits COFEK against the Kenya Airports Authority, with the Office of the Attorney General also named as a party. COFEK wants the court to halt the proposed expansion and modernization of JKIA, arguing that the procurement process used to award the contract violated constitutional principles on transparency, accountability and openness in public procurement.
At the core of the petition is a demand for full disclosure. COFEK maintains that Kenyans are entitled to know the identity of every entity participating in the deal, the financial arrangements behind it, and the full terms of the contract. The federation argues that this standard of openness is not negotiable in a major public infrastructure project financed through public resources or a public-private partnership.
The controversy behind the petition
The legal challenge lands against a backdrop of unresolved questions about who actually holds the contract. Reports linking IMC Construction Kenya, a firm associated with Zimbabwean businessman Wicknell Chivayo, to the consortium awarded the project triggered a public dispute that the Ministry of Roads and Transport has not fully put to rest. The ministry earlier rejected those reports, insisting the firm neither bid for the tender nor holds any role in the project, and called on media houses to retract what it described as false reporting.
COFEK’s petition suggests that public scepticism about those denials runs deep enough to warrant judicial scrutiny. The allegation that sufficient due diligence was not conducted during the procurement process sits at the heart of what the court will need to address.
A pattern Kenya has seen before
The hearing arrives less than two years after Kenya cancelled a 30 year build operate transfer deal with India’s Adani Group over the same airport, following civil society challenges and the indictment of Gautam Adani by United States prosecutors on fraud charges. That episode also turned on questions of transparency and public participation. The High Court later confirmed that deal was dead.
The government has set a July 2026 groundbreaking target and capped the project cost at 154.2 billion shillings. Whether the June 23 hearing produces an injunction or clears the path for construction will determine whether that timeline holds. What is already clear is that, for the second time in two years, Kenya’s courts rather than its airports are where the most consequential decisions about JKIA are being made.
