The planned East African Dangote Refinery to be constructed in Kenya will cost as much as $17 billion.
In April, it was reported that Mr Aliko Dangote, alongside the Presidents of Kenya and Uganda, Mr William Ruto and Mr Yoweri Museveni, respectively, planned to build a new oil refinery in Tanzania. The project will include a pipeline that links the Kenyan port city of Mombasa to the northeastern Tanzanian harbour of Tanga, where the facility will be situated.
However, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan did not align with the plan, which has since shifted to Kenya.
According to Bloomberg, the refinery, which would be a replica of his Lagos-based 700,000-barrel-a-day refinery, would take about five years to build in Lamu, a coastal town in southeastern Kenya, chosen for “commercial and technical” reasons.
In May, President Ruto announced that Mr Dangote would start construction of the facility in Kenya this year.
Mr Dangote has also said he would need a lot of government protection from President Ruto, noting that it would mean land, financing, and most importantly, protection from what he called the 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 recently, adding that, “If we have an agreement, we can start this year.”
Dangote is already in the process of doubling the capacity of his $20 billion Nigerian plant to 1.4 million barrels a day by 2028, to make it about the largest globally.
The continent’s biggest refinery reached full capacity weeks before the conflict in Iran and has helped Nigeria become self-sufficient in fuel as well as export to several countries.
Despite this, the African Petroleum Producers’ Organisation (APPO) says that the continent exports three-quarters of its crude production and imports 70 per cent of its refined fuels.