The High Court in Kerugoya has suspended NTSA's second-generation smart driving licence and automated traffic fines system, halting a 21-year PPP deal with Pesa Print Limited after the Road Safety Association of Kenya raised concerns over flawed procurement and lack of public participation. Here is everything motorists need to know..
High Court in Kerugoya Halts NTSA Smart Licence and Automated Fines Roll-Out
Kenya's ambitious plan to roll out second-generation smart driving licences and a nationwide automated traffic enforcement system has been brought to an abrupt and immediate standstill after the High Court in Kerugoya issued a temporary suspension of the entire project pending the full hearing and determination of a constitutional petition. The ruling, delivered by Justice Dennis Kizito and dated May 29, 2026, freezes the implementation of a 21-year Public-Private Partnership between the National Transport and Safety Authority and Pesa Print Limited — a deal that was set to fundamentally transform how Kenya issues driving licences and enforces traffic laws across the country.
The conservatory orders issued by Justice Kizito are comprehensive and unambiguous in their scope. "The implementation of the Public-Private Partnership between NTSA and Pesa Print Limited consortium relating to smart driving licences, automated traffic fines and associated services has been suspended," the court ruled, bringing to a halt a project that had already been publicly announced and was in advanced stages of preparation for nationwide deployment.
The suspension comes as a significant blow to NTSA's modernisation agenda and raises serious and immediate questions about the procurement processes, governance standards, and public engagement practices that governed how one of the most consequential transport infrastructure contracts in Kenya's recent history was awarded and structured. For the millions of Kenyan motorists who would have been directly affected by the new smart licence and automated fines system, the court's intervention represents a dramatic pause button on reforms that had already generated considerable public debate and controversy.
1,000 Smart Traffic Cameras, SMS Fines and Real-Time Enforcement: What Motorists Would Have Faced
The automated traffic enforcement system envisioned under the NTSA-Pesa Print PPP represented a quantum leap in the scale and sophistication of Kenya's road safety monitoring capability. The project called for the installation of 1,000 smart traffic cameras across the country's major highways and road network — a deployment that would have created one of the largest traffic surveillance systems on the African continent.
Of the 1,000 cameras planned for deployment, 700 were to be fixed units permanently installed at strategic locations along Kenya's major roads and highways, while the remaining 300 were to be mobile units capable of being repositioned to focus enforcement resources on specific corridors, black spots, or areas of particular concern at any given time. Together, the fixed and mobile camera network would have created a near-comprehensive surveillance web across Kenya's most heavily trafficked road infrastructure.
What made the system particularly significant — and particularly controversial — was the mechanism through which detected violations would be enforced. Rather than relying on police officers to physically stop and penalise offending motorists at the roadside, the new system was designed to link violations detected by cameras directly to individual motorists' driving licence profiles. Drivers caught by the smart cameras committing traffic offences would receive instant fine notifications delivered via SMS — a fully automated, contactless enforcement model that removes human discretion from the penalty process entirely.
The implications of this system for Kenyan motorists would have been profound. Under the automated framework, there would be no opportunity to negotiate with an officer, no possibility of a violation going undetected simply because no police were present at the time, and no practical way to dispute a fine without engaging a formal challenge process. Every vehicle on a camera-monitored road would have been subject to continuous, real-time surveillance — and every detected violation would have generated an automatic, SMS-delivered financial penalty linked directly to the registered driver's licence.
The Road Safety Association of Kenya's Petition: Three Core Allegations
The petition that triggered the High Court's suspension order was filed by the Road Safety Association of Kenya — an organisation whose stated mission of improving road safety in Kenya places it in an ostensibly aligned position with the goals of the NTSA-Pesa Print project. The fact that a road safety advocacy body moved to court to stop a road safety enforcement project speaks volumes about the seriousness of the governance and procurement concerns that motivated the petition.
The Road Safety Association of Kenya's case against the NTSA-Pesa Print PPP rests on three distinct but interconnected allegations, each of which strikes at a different dimension of how the project was conceived, approved, and prepared for implementation.
The first and perhaps most legally significant allegation is that the NTSA-Pesa Print deal was directly procured — meaning that the contract was awarded to Pesa Print Limited without going through the competitive public tendering process that Kenyan procurement law requires for contracts of this nature and scale. Critically, the petition alleges that the direct procurement route was chosen despite the fact that this very arrangement had previously been flagged as problematic by the Office of the Auditor General — Kenya's supreme audit institution. If accurate, this allegation suggests that NTSA proceeded with a procurement approach that its own national auditors had already raised red flags about, raising deeply troubling questions about institutional accountability and compliance with public finance management standards.
The second core allegation is that NTSA rushed the implementation of the project without conducting meaningful public engagement or gathering substantive input from transport sector operators — the very people whose daily working lives and livelihoods would have been most directly and immediately affected by the automated fines system and smart licence requirements. Public participation is not a procedural nicety in Kenya's constitutional framework — it is a fundamental right enshrined in the 2010 Constitution, and the failure to conduct genuine, inclusive and documented public consultation before implementing a project of this magnitude and impact would represent a serious constitutional violation.
The third allegation concerns the internal governance of NTSA itself. The petition argues that the multi-billion shilling PPP contract was entered into without the necessary board resolutions from the NTSA board of directors formally authorising the arrangement. If the contract was executed without proper board approval, it would mean that one of the most consequential infrastructure deals in NTSA's history was concluded outside the organisation's own governance framework — a governance failure that would call into question the validity of the entire partnership from its inception.
Court Certifies Matter Urgent: Next Steps and June 21 Mention Date
Having reviewed the petition and the grounds on which the Road Safety Association of Kenya sought immediate conservatory relief, Justice Dennis Kizito certified the matter as urgent — a procedural determination that reflects the court's assessment that the threat of harm from continued implementation of the suspended project is sufficiently serious and imminent to warrant fast-tracking outside the normal case scheduling process.
In addition to issuing the conservatory orders suspending the PPP implementation, the court directed the respondents — primarily NTSA and the relevant government agencies — to file their formal responses to the petition within 10 days of the order. The matter has been scheduled for mention on June 21, 2026, at which point the court will review the state of the respondents' compliance with the filing directive and determine the next procedural steps toward a full hearing of the constitutional petition.
The June 21 mention date is therefore a critical milestone in the unfolding legal battle over the NTSA-Pesa Print PPP. It will provide the first public indication of how NTSA and the government intend to defend the procurement process, the public participation record, and the board authorisation question — and it will set the timeline for the substantive hearing at which the court will ultimately determine whether the project can proceed, must be redesigned, or must be permanently halted.
Implications for Kenyan Motorists: What the Suspension Means Right Now
For the millions of Kenyan motorists who were anticipating — or apprehending — the arrival of the new smart driving licence and automated traffic fines system, the High Court's suspension order provides at minimum a temporary reprieve from the implementation of changes that many had not been adequately consulted about or prepared for.
The Ksh 3,050 smart driving licence fee will not be chargeable while the suspension order is in effect. The 1,000 smart cameras will not be deployed and operational for automated enforcement during the suspension period. And the SMS-delivered instant fines linked to driver licence profiles will not be issued through the PPP system while the court order stands.
It is important to note, however, that the suspension of the NTSA-Pesa Print PPP does not affect the separate Traffic (Minor Offences) Rules, 2016 enforcement framework that NTSA activated on June 1, 2026 — under which police officers can issue instant fines for a range of traffic violations without the automated camera system. That manual enforcement framework remains operational and is unaffected by the court's order, which is specifically directed at the PPP-based automated system and smart licence roll-out.