Kenya’s e-GP portal was meant to clean up public procurement. Move everything online, reduce human discretion, and you close the usual loopholes. That was the promise. Today, most public tenders pass through the system from start to finish.
But there is a hard truth procuring entities have already run into, the portal does not meet the law it is supposed to implement.
Section 135 of the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act is direct. A public contract only exists once a written agreement is signed, and that agreement must include specific documents – a tender form, a price schedule or bills of quantities submitted by the bidder, and other core instruments. Missing them is not a small defect; it is a breach that carries legal consequences.
Bidders key in prices on the portal. The system stores entries. What you do not get is a signed tender form or a signed price schedule attributable to the bidder. The system records data, but the Act requires executed documents. Those are not the same thing.
That gap is no longer theoretical. In 2025, the High Court in Kenya Power v Mungai rejected a contractor’s claim for payment where no section 135-compliant contract had been signed. Work had been done. Payment was refused.
The court upheld that refusal. In public procurement, a proper written contract is not optional. The portal also generates professional opinions in a format that does not conform to the Ninth Schedule prescribed form under the regulations.
The cracks show up earlier in the process as well. In January, the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board decided Al-Ahdi Insurance Brokers Limited v Kenya Animal Genetic Resources Centre. The tender ran entirely on the portal.
During evaluation, the system pulled an expired tax compliance certificate from the bidder’s supplier profile instead of the valid one submitted with the bid. The bidder was disqualified.
The notification that followed managed to describe the same bidder as ‘responsive’ while awarding the tender elsewhere, without giving any reasons.
The board set the award aside. It held that the evaluation relied on the wrong documents and that the notification failed the legal standard. It also made a remark that has stayed with many of us who work in this space, that is, issues arising from the e-GP system should be escalated to the agencies responsible for it.
Accounting officers carry personal liability for non-compliant contracts. Yet they are using a system that does not produce all the documents the law requires, without any formal direction on how to bridge the gap.
None of this calls for a rewrite of the law. It calls for direction and some system fixes. A circular from PPRA confirming acceptable interim steps would give accounting officers a measure of protection. Adjustments to the portal to generate the required documents and proper notifications would close most of the gap.
The portal was built to serve the law. It should not place those who use it at odds with that law.
The move to an electronic system was the right call. But when the system falls short of the statute, silence from the regulator leaves every procuring entity to figure things out on its own, with real legal exposure attached.