How Kenya Turned Corporate Rescue into a Ten-Year Graveyard.

The court gave Copia two more months. It also mentioned the morgue.

On 23 April 2026, the High Court considered an application to extend the e-commerce company’s administration. The remaining work included selling assets, collecting debts and dealing with the Kenya Revenue Authority. The judge described a company being monitored on its way towards intensive care and perhaps “𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐮𝐞”. The court granted two further months.

On 17 September, the High Court ordered liquidation. Copia had entered administration in May 2024. The rescue had failed to produce a business capable of continuing. The September ruling accepted liquidation as the appropriate outcome and rejected the misconduct objections advanced against the administrators, appointing them as liquidators.

For creditors, the task had become recovering what remained.

Kenya needs an insolvency regulator that can make every officeholder account for the value preserved, the expenditure incurred and the money returned. It needs independent scrutiny when the regulator itself takes an assignment. And it needs courts equipped to distinguish a funded rescue from another expensive period of waiting.

That responsibility now reaches deep into the technology economy. E-commerce platforms, logistics networks and climate businesses can carry valuable software and customer relationships alongside warehouses and machinery. A slow or badly managed exit can destroy the connections that made the assets useful.

A company can run out of cash in a week. Reconstructing its relationships can take years.

A supermarket collecting another retailer’s rent.

One of the businesses helping Uchumi survive is China Square.

The retailer occupies the main hall at Uchumi’s Lang’ata property. Uchumi’s annual report for the year ended June 2025 describes rental income as support for its recovery. The group earned KSh61.7 million in rent across its properties, alongside KSh123 million in sales. It reported a KSh8.7 million profit while liabilities still exceeded assets by about KSh7.05 billion.

Leasing valuable space can preserve an asset and generate cash. Creditors have little use for an empty building maintained in honour of a retailer’s glorious past. They need payments.

Uchumi’s monitor report dated 30 June 2025 recorded KSh62.36 million paid under legal fees and other preliminary expenses. It separately recorded KSh5 million in monitor fees and KSh146.5 million to banks.

The corresponding figures were KSh7 million for staff salary arrears and KSh10.8 million for trade creditors and landlords. The legal and preliminary expense category was about three and a half times those last two payments combined.

Both fee categories were marked “Settled”. Payments to staff, trade creditors, and landlords were continuing. The report cautioned that some cheques remained uncollected and that updated information came from management without independent verification. These are reported payments, not independently confirmed receipts.

Legal work can protect property and recover money. A monitor needs resources to oversee an agreement. Security guards cannot be paid with promises of a successful turnaround.

Every significant expense should still have an approving authority, a budget, and an explanation of what it preserves. Necessary spending and avoidable spending draw from the same depleted pool.

A rescue has to earn its running costs.

A receivership that outlasted the machinery.

Miwani Sugar’s 2025 accounts recorded a receivership dating to 2001.

The mill had stopped producing sugar in 2000. Its accounts for the year ended June 2025 describe machinery idle for more than two decades, with extensive deterioration and obsolescence. Restarting production would require full rehabilitation.

Four successive receivership management teams had held office since March 2001. The company’s principal activities had become cane farming and protecting assets.

Miwani entered receivership before the Insolvency Act of 2015. Any serious review must cover those legacy cases alongside modern administrations. The assets do not stop ageing because a file sits under an earlier statute.

A court can restrain a creditor. It cannot restrain rust.

Nor can it compel customers to keep ordering, experienced staff to stay or suppliers to extend credit. A functioning enterprise contains relationships and knowledge that never appear in an auction catalogue.

A manufacturer needs maintenance and customers. A haulier needs roadworthy trucks and contracts. A retailer needs stock. Once those systems disintegrate, the buyer may acquire equipment and buildings where a working business once stood.

More time can improve a recovery when a funded buyer awaits approval or litigation is close to releasing cash. It can also consume the remaining value. Each extension needs a comparison of those alternatives, including who finances the wait.

A technology business without its network.

KOKO agent Fredrick Onchenge had served up to 50 customers a day before the fuel network stopped. “My livelihood was gone,” he told the Associated Press in February 2026. Households were weighing a return to charcoal or more expensive cooking alternatives.

KOKO’s Kenyan operating companies entered insolvency proceedings on 1 February 2026. PwC says carbon-credit sales through a UK company helped subsidize wider operations, but the required Kenyan approval for compliance-market sales had not been granted.

A household had bought into an operating system for cooking. Once fuel distribution stopped, preserving dispensers alone could not preserve the service.

Rescuing such a network requires decisions about fuel supply, working capital, regulatory approval, and the organizations controlling each part. A bidder needs to know which rights and contracts it can actually acquire.

Sendy’s group companies entered administration in September 2023. The appointment covered several distinct entities, including Sendy Limited and Sendy Kenya Freight. Their business had connected transport providers and customers through technology.

For a platform business, a working server and an inactive customer network are very different assets. Drivers can move elsewhere. Merchants can change providers. Software may depend on licences, specialist staff, and services that require continuing payment.

Copia’s September 2026 ruling also addressed creditor concerns about the sale of its brand, intellectual property, and transactional data. The court rejected the challenge, finding that the evidence supplied did not establish an unlawful undervalue or other grounds for intervention.

A valuation of a technology business needs to identify those assets and their limits. Personal data also carries legal obligations. Acquisition does not remove the requirement for a lawful basis to process it.

An insolvency practitioner preserving yesterday’s computers while tomorrow’s customer relationships disappear can lose the business without losing a single laptop.

A supplier financing someone else’s failure.

ARM Cement’s November 2023 liquidation report recorded a distribution already made to unsecured trade and other creditors of 6.78 percent. The projected eventual recovery for that group was between 7.6 and 8.5 percent. Secured creditors’ projected recovery was between 70 and 75 percent.

At the rate already distributed, a hypothetical admitted unsecured claim of KSh1 million would have returned KSh67,800.

The supplier’s bills would not automatically shrink to match.

Materials may already have been bought. Wages may already have been paid. The next order may require working capital that the unpaid invoice was supposed to supply. The distressed company’s losses can travel through the supply chain into businesses that were trading perfectly well.

ARM’s Kenyan operations had passed to National Cement in October 2019. At the handover, the administrator described the transaction as preserving business continuity, suppliers, and employment. Productive operations could continue under new ownership while the indebted company proceeded towards liquidation.

Saving productive assets, preserving employment, and repaying unsecured suppliers are separate outcomes. A national scorecard should report all three.

A low distribution alone cannot establish misconduct. The opening condition of the company, creditor priorities, funded bids, and administration costs need examination. Creditors should receive the records required to make that examination while there is still money to recover.

A rescue financed by more than optimism.

Administration can maintain a company as a going concern or achieve a better collective creditor outcome than immediate liquidation. The Act also permits asset realization for secured or preferential creditors under specified conditions. Company survival is one objective within a legal framework that allocates losses.

Kaluworks exited administration in August 2022 through a company voluntary arrangement. Bowmans’ December 2022 bulletin reported a KSh1.2 billion shareholder injection that partly repaid secured lenders. Creditor concessions accompanied fresh money.

A viable rescue needs someone willing to finance operations while old creditors negotiate their losses. Reopening a factory without funding electricity, wages, and raw materials can produce a ceremony followed by another shutdown.

An investor’s expression of interest is useful. The electricity supplier generally prefers money.

Directors must also answer for what they hand over. Missing accounts, disputed ownership, and unexplained transfers make rescue harder. Practitioners can inherit companies whose customers and working capital have already disappeared.

Independent review should distinguish losses inherited from losses incurred during an appointment. Otherwise, poor directors can blame the practitioner, and a poor practitioner can blame the directors.

A referee undertaking assignments.

The Office of the Official Receiver, within BRS, regulates insolvency practice and investigates conduct under the Act. It also administers and liquidates companies. The office supervises the profession while undertaking insolvency work itself.

Creditors challenging the office’s work need an independent route of review. Courts provide remedies, but litigation requires more money from people already trying to recover a loss.

Private practitioners need equivalent scrutiny. Time-based fees can increase as an assignment lengthens. Realization-based remuneration can favour a quick sale. A reward linked solely to company survival can encourage continued trading at creditors’ expense.

Budgets, independent valuations, and documented decisions are essential under each arrangement. A proposed buyer’s connections should be disclosed through the proper process. A decision to reject a higher bid should explain whether the bidder had funding and could complete.

Physical assets need physical accounting. A vehicle fleet needs an opening inventory, ownership records, locations, and a trail for every disposal or release. A digital register still has to agree with what is in the yard.

In July 2026, the Supreme Court granted conservatory orders restraining implementation of specified vesting orders in the Cytonn litigation pending appeal. The dispute concerns constitutional property protections and insolvency powers.

For an investor, homeowner, or secured lender, the difference between owning an asset and having a claim against its owner can determine the recovery. A public register must keep those distinctions visible.

A credit bill paid before default.

Corporate Kenya pays for difficult recoveries through the terms on which money is advanced.

CBK’s 2024 MSME credit survey reported that commercial banks’ average cost of recovering non-performing MSME loans rose to 16 percent, from 7 percent in 2022. Recovery periods shortened across the commercial-bank enterprise categories even as costs rose. The survey covers debt recovery broadly, rather than isolating insolvency proceedings.

A faster process can still be an expensive process.

The same survey reported average collateral requirements equivalent to 93 percent of loan value for microenterprises, 99 percent for small enterprises, and 112 percent for medium enterprises. Those averages cover collateral generally, across responding banks and microfinance banks.

Lenders assess the probability of default and what remains recoverable afterwards. A truck worth money on paper must be located, legally enforced and sold. A receivable must be collectible. A disputed title can immobilise collateral while costs continue.

The response may be a higher rate, moresecurity,y or a rejected application. A borrower can pay every instalment on time and still bear the price of a weak recovery system.

Kenya can market itself as an investment destination. A credit committee still needs to know what happens when the borrower cannot pay.

Buying software for the Commercial and Tax Division will not fix an incentives crisis. A transcription tool can record a hearing. A case-management system can flag a missing report. Someone must still verify the inventory, challenge the valuation, and answer for the sale.

Three decisions for Parliament, the Attorney General, and the Judiciary

Decision 1. Publish the authority and audit the estates.

Attorney General Dorcas Oduor should lead a program to publish the instruments establishing the Official Receiver’s appointment, term, and any reappointment with the legally responsible appointing authority. Section 701 provides for an appointment period specified in the instrument, up to seven years, with eligibility for reappointment. The applicable instrument should be publicly accessible.

An independent review should account for every estate handled by the office between September 2015 and November 2026. It should reconcile assets taken into control, disposals, expenditure, bank balances, and distributions. The Auditor-General should audit public funds and accounts within the Auditor-General’s mandate, with access to other estate records secured through lawful procedures.

The review needs a published scope, budget, and timetable. Older estates, significant unexplained differences and conflicts of interest should receive priority for forensic examination. Findings should identify responsible decisions and lead to corrective action, disciplinary proceedings, or criminal referral where evidence warrants them.

Decision 2. Pay for verified outcomes and give creditors a stronger voice.

Parliament’s Finance and National Planning Committee should conduct post-legislative scrutiny of the Act’s first decade. It should examine rescue outcomes, creditor recoveries, fees and the cost of delay across public and private appointments.

Fee reform should control disposal charges and tie any rescue success bonus to sustained trading and independently verified results. A proposed 70 percent workforce-retention benchmark deserves consultation on its baseline, duration and treatment of necessary restructuring. It must not reward keeping an insolvent shell trading while fresh debts accumulate.

Creditors also need an early opportunity to assess who controls their recovery. Parliament should consider requiring a meeting within 14 days of an appointment, subject to practicable notice arrangements, to examine the officeholder, conflicts and initial budget. Any new power to confirm or replace an administrator must protect creditor classes and remain subject to lawful judicial review.

Liquidation should remain available when no funded rescue can deliver a better outcome. Its success should be measured by net recovery, time, and compliance with creditor priorities. Practitioners should earn reasonable fees for completing necessary work efficiently under either route.

Decision 3. Put the orders, costs, and extensions on the record.

Chief Justice Martha Koome and the judiciary should strengthen public case tracking, service records and reasoned decisions in insolvency cases. A person whose registered property rights may be affected needs proper notice and an opportunity to be heard.

An ordinary 21-day notice period could be considered for relevant property applications, with reasoned exceptions for genuine urgency. Changes to statutory rights and powers require legislation. Practice directions should improve the process within the law.

At the twelve-month administration milestone, creditors should receive an updated valuation, expenditure account, and comparison of extension with available alternatives. The law already provides for a twelve-month term and conditional extensions. A further creditor vote on a costed plan could strengthen scrutiny, with the court retaining its lawful supervisory role.

Every extension should identify the unfinished task, its owner, its funding, and the additional recovery expected. The previous extension’s promises should appear alongside what was delivered.

BRS should publish a verified scorecard by 31 March 2027 naming the companies handled by the Official Receiver since 2015, the proceeds realized, total costs and distributions by creditor class. Legacy receiverships need a separate aging register. Its current monthly statistics count petitions and appointments without following each case through those outcomes.

The Treasury should publish the implementation cost before approving the program. Legislative drafting, forensic work, court capacity, and account verification need a real budget. A guessed saving can conceal another underfunded reform.

A related Cytonn property petition is scheduled for mention on 3 February 2027 to establish the status of the Supreme Court proceedings.

Copia’s creditors now need a liquidation they can follow from asset sale to money in their accounts. Every charge needs a purpose, every distribution a date, and every delay a responsible decision-maker.

Kenya needs a rescue industry paid to preserve value, complete its work, and account for the losses. Every additional year should face the same commercial scrutiny as the company’s next loan application.

The file can wait. The wages, the fuel and the next repayment cannot.