The stage is already set for the groundbreaking ceremony for the Dangote East Africa Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals SEZ, to be held on Wednesday in Mokowe, Lamu County, Kenya.
The proposed refinery, estimated to cost about $ 16 billion, is expected to have a processing capacity of 700,000 barrels per day and is targeted for completion by 2030.
The facility is planned to process crude from Kenya’s Turkana oilfields as well as supplies from other parts of Africa and is expected to reduce the region’s dependence on imported petroleum products.
Speaking to reporters in Nairobi on Tuesday, Africa’s richest man said he saw it as part of efforts to stop the continent exporting raw materials and start selling finished products.
“By 2030, the majority of African countries will be self-sufficient. It does not matter where it is refined, but it should be in the African continent, on the soil of Africa,” he said in response to a question from AFP on when Africa would no longer need to import fuel from elsewhere.
He dismissed concerns about the Kenyan project, which is being built at Lamu on the picturesque Indian Ocean coast, and already faces a land rights court case and opposition from Greenpeace and others over its environmental impact.
“There’s actually no problem with these sort of cases,” Dangote said. “There are people who don’t want the development of Africa.”
Dangote, who disclosed plans to invest an additional $50 billion across Africa after committing more than $25 billion to existing businesses, said the next phase of the Group’s expansion would combine massive industrial investment with a deliberate opening of its businesses to African ownership through the capital markets.
Speaking during a fireside chat with Chief Executive Officer of the Nairobi Securities Exchange, Frank Mwiti, at the “Dangote Petroleum Refinery IPO High Level Investor Engagement” organised by the NSE, Dangote said Africa could no longer afford “baby steps” if it intended to compete globally.
“We have already invested more than $25 billion, but right now, we’re going ahead to invest an additional $50 billion,” Dangote said. “We want to create and generate wealth for Africans, to make sure that we defend our markets. And the only way to defend the market is not to do baby steps. It’s better we do big scale.”
President Williams Ruto’s chief economic advisor, David Ndii, disclosed that the Lamu project grew out of discussions among African policymakers, financiers and business leaders on how to deploy the continent’s natural resources for industrialisation rather than extraction. According to Ndii, those discussions identified petroleum refining as one of the strategic opportunities for East Africa and led to engagement with Dangote, President William Ruto, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and other regional leaders.
He said a closed-door meeting in April examined an addressable East African market for finished petroleum products estimated at 20 million metric tonnes annually, potentially rising to 30 million tonnes.
He traced the intellectual roots of the project to an earlier Nairobi meeting convened by the President and Chief Executive of Africa Finance Corporation, Samaila Zubairu, which challenged African leaders to reconsider an economic model under which infrastructure readily attracts international financing when designed to evacuate raw materials, but struggles to secure capital when intended to process those resources locally.
Quoting a phrase from Zubairu that he said had stayed with him, Ndii declared: “We export our minerals FOB and import inflation CIF.” He said the Lamu project represented an attempt to reverse that equation.
The East African expansion is also being tied to a broader push by Dangote to change who owns Africa’s biggest businesses. Dangote told investors that the ongoing public offer of Dangote Petroleum Refinery was not primarily driven by a need to raise cash but by a desire to democratise wealth and allow ordinary Africans to participate in the prosperity created by the continent’s industrialisation.
“It’s not because we need the money. No. It’s because we want to share this prosperity with everybody,” he said. “The real purpose is for us to democratise wealth-making.” He disclosed that the Group was prepared to progressively release more equity in its businesses as investor demand grows.
Dangote went further, declaring that all the Group’s operating businesses would eventually be opened increasingly to public ownership.
“I’ve said that all the companies that we operate from today, eventually all of them will be owned by the people,” he said.
The industrialist disclosed that a new shipping business being developed by the Group would eventually be taken to the capital market, while its expanding fertiliser operations would also be opened to public participation. “Let people own it,” he said.
Dangote said the Group’s ambition was to create millions of African shareholders who would benefit not only from dividends but also from capital appreciation as the underlying businesses grow.
He also declared that when the Lamu refinery matures for public ownership, it should be listed in Kenya rather than automatically taken to the Nigerian market.
“If tomorrow we are going to have the refinery here in Lamu to be listed, we don’t have to list it in Nigeria. We shouldn’t list it in Nigeria. We should list it here,” he said.
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