Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest man, has confirmed plans to build a major new oil refinery in Kenya, choosing the coastal island of Lamu as the site for his next great industrial project. The facility is planned to process 700,000 barrels per day and is estimated to cost around 20 billion US dollars, marking one of the largest single industrial investments of its kind anywhere on the continent.
According to the announcement, the refinery will take up to three years to build and, once completed, will be the largest in East Africa. It would also rank as the second-largest refinery on the entire continent, trailing only Dangote's own sprawling refinery in Lagos, Nigeria, which has already begun to reshape fuel supply dynamics across West Africa since it came on stream.
The project is to be financed through a combination of internally generated cash, bond issuance and a planned initial public offering. That funding structure signals both the sheer scale of the undertaking and Dangote's intention to draw in outside investors, spreading the cost of a facility whose price tag runs into tens of billions of dollars over the coming years of construction.
Company officials made clear that Kenya had been the preferred destination from the very outset. Devakumar Edwin, the vice president for oil and gas at Dangote Industries, said Kenya was the choice from the beginning, underlining a deliberate strategic decision to anchor the group's East African expansion on the Kenyan coast rather than elsewhere across the wider region.
The significance of the plan lies partly in what it could mean for a region that has long depended on imported refined fuel. Bringing large-scale refining capacity onto African soil is being presented as a statement of industrial ambition, with the potential to reduce reliance on imports and reshape how fuel is supplied across East Africa in the years ahead.
The announcement comes as Kenya moves to strengthen the framework around its own economic future. Earlier in the week, President William Ruto signed the Sovereign Wealth Fund Act into law, creating separate vehicles to cushion the economy against shocks, finance priority infrastructure projects and permanently ring-fence a share of mineral and petroleum revenues for future generations.
Taken together, the developments point to a wider push to build long-term industrial and financial capacity on the continent. For Kenya, hosting a refinery of this scale would represent a landmark investment, while for Dangote it extends an ambition already visible in Lagos to position African-owned facilities at the heart of the continent's energy supply chain.