Africa’s richest man eyes Kenya for new refinery
ft.com/content/ecabee35-a16f-4f71-b05e-c8fb716f7fcaDavid Pilling
May 10, 2026
Aliko Dangote tells the FT he is leaning towards Mombasa rather than Tanzania for 650,000-barrel-a-day oil mega-project
Aliko Dangote made his fortune by persuading successive Nigerian governments to give him tax breaks and protection from import competition © Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg
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Aliko Dangote, Africa’s wealthiest industrialist, is eyeing Kenya as the site of a huge 650,000-barrel-a-day oil refinery he intends to build in east Africa, he told the FT, after questions over a previous push to build it in Tanzania.
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan last week complained angrily to her Kenyan counterpart William Ruto that she had not been consulted over the earlier plan to build it on her country’s coastline, which was announced in her absence last month at an infrastructure summit.
Dangote said in an interview: “I’m leaning more towards Mombasa because Mombasa has a much larger, deeper port.” He compared Kenya’s port to Tanga, the proposed Tanzanian site for the refinery to process oil from Uganda and the open market. Dangote estimated it would cost $15bn-$17bn to build.
“Kenyans consume more. It’s a bigger economy,” he said, adding that crude oil for the refinery could be transported by ship and need not be located near a pipeline that will carry oil nearly 1,500 kilometres from Ugandan oilfields to the Tanzanian coast at Tanga.
“The ball is in the hands of President Ruto,” he said. “Whatever President Ruto says is what I’ll do.”
The Dangote refinery site, in Lagos, Nigeria, was built over 10 years entirely in-house © Benson Ibeabuchi/Bloomberg
Talk of a new massive oil refinery in Africa follows the long-awaited completion of Dangote’s own $20bn refinery on swampland in Lagos, Nigeria’s coastal commercial capital. It comes as the fallout from the war in Iran highlights the significance of local refining capacity.
For the east African refinery to get off the ground, Dangote said, he would need Ruto to offer land, some east African finance and, most important, protection from what he called dumping of cheap fuel from the likes of Russia or India.
“There is no refinery in the world that can survive without that protection,” he said. “If we have an agreement, we can start this year.”
Tanzania’s president said this month she had complained to her Kenyan counterpart after he and Dangote jointly announced the plan to build it in her country. “Why did you announce a refinery in Tanga, and I know nothing about it?” she said she had told Ruto in a private meeting.
Industry analysts have speculated that Dangote might be trying to get a better deal by playing the east African neighbours off against each other. He told the FT he could still build the refinery in Tanzania “if they are able to sort themselves out”.
Dangote’s Nigerian refinery was built over 10 years entirely in-house, defying critics who doubted he could ever get it up and running after decades in which the Nigerian state had tried and failed to build meaningful refining capacity.“Dangote feels vindicated, not only by succeeding technically in getting the refinery to work, but also succeeding commercially,” one Dangote executive said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The plant, the biggest so-called single-train refinery in the world at 650,000 barrels a day, has hit full capacity just when other countries are struggling to access petrol, diesel and jet fuel because most ships cannot transit the Strait of Hormuz.
Unlike several other African countries, such as Mauritius, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe — which have had to ration fuel or dilute it — Nigeria has seen no lines at petrol stations and has not had to take emergency measures.
Dangote’s refinery has been able to divert jet fuel, at hefty premiums, to European airlines scrabbling for supplies to keep flying. He has also prioritised sales to Ethiopian Airlines, by far Africa’s most important carrier, with a network that covers the entire continent.
The Dangote refinery is also a big exporter of urea fertiliser to the rest of the continent, with Nigeria absorbing only a fraction of its 3mn-tonne annual capacity.
The Iran war, and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has been “payday” for Dangote’s business, according to the senior executive, who said fertiliser prices had doubled and margins on jet fuel widened significantly.
The Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran. Fallout from the war in Iran has highlighted the significance of local refining capacity © Razieh Poudat/ISNA/AP
Dangote himself told the FT: “You can see all the other oil companies, their profitability has doubled. So you don’t expect us to do less.”
Dimieari Von Kemedi, a Nigerian entrepreneur whose farming-related businesses rely on diesel for tractors and road haulage, said the Dangote refinery was making its worth felt in Nigeria. “Even if they close the Strait of Hormuz, it doesn’t concern us. We can produce and refine all the energy we need,” he said.
Other African governments, Kemedi said, were belatedly concluding they could not rely on the rest of the world for necessities, from pharmaceuticals and food to fertiliser and diesel. “It should not have taken the war in the Middle East to make that obvious.”
Kenya’s president has been fulsome in his praise of Dangote, saying that the Nigerian industrialist, the richest man in Africa, has demonstrated that Africans can build their own mega-projects.
“Nigeria has been a producer of oil for all the years that we know,” he said of Africa’s most populous country. “Yet, when you went to Nigeria, there were queues of people looking for fuel in petrol stations . . . until one African stepped forward and built a refinery.”
Dangote has made his fortune — selling salt, sugar, flour, cement and now petroleum products — by persuading successive Nigerian governments to give him tax breaks and favoured access to foreign currency as well as protecting his business from import competition.
Dangote said he was already pressing ahead with plans to more than double the capacity at his Lagos refinery to 1.4mn b/d. In 30 months, he said, he would have the equivalent of 10 per cent of US refining capacity and would be neck and neck with Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani’s company, which also refines about 1.4mn b/d.
“We’ll be price movers in the market,” Dangote said, adding that it was incumbent on Africans to invest in their own continent. “If we don’t, who else will?”
https://www.ft.com/content/ecabee35-a16f-4f71-b05e-c8fb716f7fca
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