Insolvency practitioners for Koko Networks, the Nairobi-based clean cooking company that imploded earlier this year, have launched a formal search for buyers for its core ethanol cooking technology and a manufacturing plant in India, as they attempt to salvage value for creditors from one of Africa’s highest-profile climate technology failures.
A public request for expressions of interest, published by administrators and liquidators in Mauritius and India, invites bids for an integrated package of assets: the company’s ethanol cooking intellectual property, including patents and designs for hardware and software; a manufacturing facility for stoves and canisters in Sanand, Gujarat; and a fuel distribution and retail operations platform.
The sale is being targeted at corporate and institutional participants with demonstrated financial capacity to conclude a transaction exceeding $15m. Interested parties have until 5pm UK time on Friday 17 July 2026 to request the formal invitation document, according to a notice signed by Rajeev Bagsent, administrator of Koko Networks Limited in Mauritius, and Nidhi Poddar, liquidator of two related Indian entities, Saarus Innovations Private Limited and Koko Networks Private Limited, both in voluntary liquidation. PricewaterhouseCoopers is acting as transaction adviser.
The move represents the first public effort to monetise the proprietary technology that underpinned one of East Africa’s most ambitious clean energy ventures. Koko Networks spent more than a decade and, by its own account, roughly $300m building a “carbon-financed utility” — a network of 3,000 automated bioethanol fuel dispensers, known as KokoPoints, that served approximately 1.5m households across low-income Kenyan neighbourhoods.
The business model was elegant in theory. Households switched from charcoal to cleaner-burning bioethanol, generating certified emissions reductions that were sold as carbon credits to airlines and heavy industry under international climate frameworks. The company raised more than $100m in equity and debt from investors including the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund and vehicles backed by development finance institutions. A World Bank Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) guarantee provided additional backing.
But the entire edifice rested on a single regulatory document: a Letter of Authorisation from Kenya’s government permitting the cross-border transfer of carbon credits. Without it, Koko could not access the compliance-grade carbon markets whose higher prices were essential to subsidising the low retail fuel prices that made the model work.
Kenyan authorities declined to issue the letter, citing concerns about the authenticity of the carbon credits and the transparency of the company’s operations. A 2024 University of California, Berkeley study suggesting that cookstove credits were systematically overstated compounded the regulatory pressure. By January 2026, with the authorisation still withheld, the company ran out of cash. In February, its entire 700-person workforce was laid off and the KokoPoint network went dark, leaving households without a reliable clean fuel source. The directors placed the companies into administration shortly afterward.
Last April, creditors gathered virtually for the first time since the administration began, reviewing proposals from joint administrators Muniu Thoithi and George Weru of PwC Kenya. Few participants expected a going-concern rescue. The carbon credit pipeline that had made Koko viable had evaporated, and the regulatory dispute with Nairobi remained unresolved.
The asset sale now under way is therefore a recovery exercise, not a relaunch. Its outcome matters greatly to secured lenders who had been tightening their grip on Koko’s remaining assets for more than a year. UK Companies House filings show that in December 2024, Koko Networks Carbon Finance (UK) Limited registered charges in favour of FirstRand Bank (RMB), the AfricaGoGreen Fund and the Mirova Gigaton Fund over all company assets — including intellectual property, bank accounts and investments — as security for a $60m facility agreement. Those charges mean the proceeds of any IP sale will flow first to secured creditors, with employees owed salary arrears ranking behind them under Kenyan insolvency law.
Whether the technology commands a price anywhere near the $15m threshold remains an open question. The manufacturing plant in Gujarat is a tangible asset, but the ethanol cooking IP is intimately tied to a carbon-credit subsidy model that has just suffered a catastrophic regulatory rejection in its home market. A buyer would need either a jurisdiction with a more predictable carbon market framework or a fundamentally different commercial model.
The Koko Networks collapse has reverberated through the climate finance community well beyond East Africa. It is among the first high-profile failures of a “carbon-as-a-service” company — a model that attracted significant institutional capital on the assumption that governments would honour their Paris Agreement commitments to authorise cross-border credit transfers. The episode also threatens to tighten the supply of credits for Corsia, the international aviation sector’s carbon offsetting scheme, ahead of crucial compliance deadlines in 2027–2028, for which cookstove credits were considered eligible.
For now, the administrators’ immediate task is to gauge whether any party sees residual value in the integrated ethanol cooking platform that Koko built. The 3,000 silent KokoPoints scattered across Kenyan neighbourhoods stand as a reminder of what is at stake — and of the regulatory risk that can unravel even the most heavily financed climate technology ventures.