The Kenyan government on Friday formally offered a 25% stake of the country's most-profitable mobile phone firm, Safaricom, for sale effective March 28 and invited the entire East African region to participate as local investors.

Kenyan Finance Minister Amos Kimunya unveiled Safaricom Initial Public Offer (IPO) calendar, which will culminate in the listing of the company's 25% stake at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) on June 9 with at least 10 billion ordinary shares on offer.

The Safaricom IPO has exposed Safaricom as East Africa's largest firm, in equity terms.

The company has an equity value of Ksh200 billion (US$2.9 billion).

The firm has also invested at least Ksh65 billion in infrastructure and network operation.

The offer price for the Safaricom IPO is one of the lowest ever, at Ksh5 ($0.07cents) and a minimum of 2,000 shares per person to guarantee the widest ever national and international reach. The Kenyan government is targeting at least Ksh50b ($735m) from the sale.

"I expect we will be generating Ksh50 billion which will go towards ensuring we have an infrastructure to make Kenyan companies more competitive," Kimunya said before unveiling to pricing of the initial offer, expected to entice millions of prospective investors.

The IPO has been divided into two special categories with domestic investors, which will include the entire East African Community (EAC) citizens and an international window, which has been specifically given to foreign institutional investors.

"This is a very unique IPO," Kimunya said.

Kenya is set to apply the internationally tested system of book-building especially in the sale of shares to the institutional investors.

The institutional investors are mostly foreign fund managers with money to invest either long-term or short-term.

"We have an opportunity to test the book-building concept. Having a separate pool of investment section will put us on the international map," Kimunya said.

He said investors should prepare to participate in large numbers in the IPO, which will expose Safaricom as one of the most successful entities in the African continent.

Out of the 10 billion shares on offer, the international fund managers, investment banks, pension schemes and unit trusts managers will get the lion's share with at least 35% of the shares, a third of the company's shareholding, kept aside for the institutions.

Esther Koimett, Kenya's Investment Secretary and the brain behind the IPO, said the government will claw back 15% of the shares set aside for the institutional investors if the local demand for shares outstrip the supply.

Kenya's newly created Privatisation Commission, is overseeing the sale of the shares, expected to become a mega deal on the Nairobi Stock Exchange, which boasts of some 800,000 investors, most of whom premiered with the series of IPOs sealed in 2007.

The offer opens on Friday, March 28 and closes Wednesday, April, 23.

The government is putting 25% of its shareholding and will retain only 35% shareholding after the IPO is complete.