Aliko Dangote is betting on a 700,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Kenya to reshape East Africa’s energy supply by reducing the region’s dependence on imported petroleum products and creating a broader industrial market around locally processed resources.
The Dangote East Africa refinery, being developed in Lamu, is designed to process approximately 700,000 barrels of crude per day and generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity, according to Dangote, who spoke at the project’s groundbreaking ceremony.
The facility will also produce 1 million tons of polypropylene and base oils, while Dangote said it will target supplying at least 20% of jet fuel consumed by Europe and the UK.
The project is being positioned as a regional rather than purely Kenyan investment, with Dangote identifying Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Zambia and other markets as potential beneficiaries of the refinery’s output.
“Our vision is for this facility to help strengthen the region’s energy security and serve a wider East African market and target opportunities across the Indian Ocean, reducing the region’s dependence on imported refined petroleum products and retaining more value within the African economies,” Dangote said.
The investment reflects his broader argument that African economies need to process more of the resources they produce rather than exporting raw materials and importing finished goods.
“We have exported crude oil and imported refined products. We have exported minerals and imported manufactured goods. We have exported agricultural commodities and imported processed foods,” Dangote said.
“We must process more of what we produce. We must create more value here at home in Africa.”
The refinery is also expected to support a wider energy and petrochemical ecosystem, with Dangote identifying opportunities in logistics, engineering, marine services, manufacturing, technology and small and medium-sized enterprises around the facility.
The project is intended to build on Dangote’s experience with the company’s refinery in Lagos, which he described as proof that an African private company can develop infrastructure at global scale.
“We built it to demonstrate something much bigger that Africa can build at global scale,” Dangote said. “And today, we bring that confidence from Leki to Lamu, not to produce Nigeria in Lamu, not simply to replicate a facility, but to take the lessons we have learned, combine them with the Kenyan talent, East African opportunity and global technology and build something better and bigger and more improved that belongs to the future of this region.”
Dangote said the company plans to complete and commission the East African refinery within 14 months of the groundbreaking.
The project also includes a regional ownership component. Dangote said up to 30% of equity has been marked for East African countries, allowing participating governments to share in profits generated from supply and exports.
Kenya and Rwanda have already moved quickly to take up that opportunity, Dangote said, while expressing confidence that other countries would follow.
The refinery is therefore being conceived as a regional energy platform rather than a standalone processing facility. By combining fuel production with power generation and petrochemical output, the project aims to capture more value from energy demand within Africa while opening opportunities for exports beyond the continent.
Dangote said the ultimate objective is to change Africa’s trading position from a market for imported manufactured products to a supplier of goods produced on the continent.
“We want to actually see more ships to leave the African shores carrying products made in Africa by Africans for Africa consumed by the world,” he said.
