Dangote Breaks Ground on 700,000bpd Kenya Refinery

By Adedapo Adesanya

Africa’s richest man, Mr Aliko Dangote, has broken ground on a proposed $16 billion petroleum refinery in Kenya, with the facility expected to process 700,000 barrels of crude oil per day by 2030.

The Dangote East Africa Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals Special Economic Zone, located in Mokowe, Lamu County, is planned to process crude from Kenya’s Turkana oilfields alongside supplies from other African producers.

The project is expected to reduce East Africa’s dependence on imported refined petroleum products and expand the Dangote Group’s refining footprint beyond Nigeria.

The leaders of Uganda, Ethiopia, Togo and Benin also attended the groundbreaking. Also present was former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Mr Dangote has offered regional governments a combined 30 per cent stake in the refinery, according to Reuters news agency.

“This is Africa coming together to build Africa. Today we are not simply breaking ground for a refinery; we’re breaking ground for a new chapter in Africa’s industrial journey to a brighter future,” Mr Dangote said as he launched the project.

“Lekki proved that it can be done; Lamu must prove that it can be repeated,” he added.

The refinery is set to become the only one in East Africa and is Kenya’s largest infrastructure project since independence, surpassing the $5.1bn (£3.9bn) Standard Gauge Railway.

The Kenyan refinery forms part of the Dangote Group’s wider expansion plans across Africa, with the industrialist disclosing that the group intends to invest an additional $50 billion across the continent after committing more than $25 billion to existing businesses.

Kenya’s President William Ruto’s Chief Economic Adviser, Mr David Ndii, said the Lamu refinery emerged from discussions among African policymakers, financiers and business leaders on how to use the continent’s natural resources for industrialisation rather than simply exporting them.

According to Mr Ndii, those discussions identified petroleum refining as a strategic opportunity for East Africa and subsequently led to engagements involving Dangote, Ruto, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and other regional leaders.

He said a closed-door meeting in April examined an East African market for finished petroleum products estimated at 20 million metric tonnes annually, with the potential to rise to 30 million tonnes.

Mr Ndii said the project was also influenced by earlier discussions on Africa’s infrastructure financing model, particularly the disparity between projects designed to facilitate the export of raw materials and those intended to support local processing.