Kenyans lined up in their thousands Friday to subscribe to the eagerly awaited share sale of Safaricom, a mobile phone operator part-owned by Vodafone that is set to be the biggest listed company in east Africa.

The offer period for the company, which has been valued at $3.1bn, opened on schedule in spite of Safaricom’s last-minute entanglement in a political dispute within Kenya’s new power-sharing government.