Reducing East Africa’s Dependence on Imported Fuels
The planned facility would supply Kenya and neighbouring countries with refined petroleum products, reducing the region’s reliance on fuel imports. Against a backdrop of shifting global oil flows — where India’s Russian oil imports reach a record high — East Africa is seeking to secure its own refining capacity. The project would represent Dangote Group’s largest refining investment outside Nigeria.
Devakumar did not disclose the exact cost of the project but indicated it would be comparable to that of the Lagos refinery. That facility, with a capacity of 650,000 bbl/d, cost more than $20 billion by the time it began operating in 2024. The initial estimate, set in 2013, stood at around $9 billion — a figure that more than doubled due to a site relocation, engineering challenges, currency depreciation, the COVID-19 pandemic and global inflation. The planned financing structure — combining equity, bond markets and a public share offering — differs from the traditional industry model, which relies more heavily on bank loans and multilateral institutions.
Lamu Over Tanga: A Logistical Decision
Lamu, an island off the Kenyan coast, was selected after the group rejected Tanga, a Tanzanian port city, on the grounds of infrastructure, logistics and market considerations. Devakumar indicated that Kenya had been the preferred choice from the outset. No exact cost figure was disclosed, and the vice president did not detail the respective share of each financing component in the total budget.
Aliko Dangote, the group’s founder and ranked by Forbes as Africa’s richest man, aims with this project to expand the conglomerate’s fuel processing capacity across the continent. The Kenya refinery would build on the start-up of the Lagos facility in 2024, which marks the beginning of a pan-African refining strategy. No commissioning date has been communicated at this stage for the Lamu project.
