L-R: Africa’s richest man and founder of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote; President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and President William Ruto of Kenya.
A continent that loses an estimated $29 billion annually by shipping unprocessed resources abroad could soon see one of its most consequential industrial bets placed — not in West Africa, but deep in the East.
Aliko Dangote, Africa’s wealthiest businessman, has proposed building a 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery in East Africa, a facility he says would mirror the scale of his landmark $20 billion Nigerian plant — and one he insists could be ready within four to five years if governments deliver on policy and long-term commitment.
“I can give commitment… if they will support the refinery, we’ll build the identical one that we have in Nigeria,” Dangote said, speaking at the “Africa We Build” summit in Nairobi alongside Kenyan President William Ruto and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
The pitch arrives at a moment of rare alignment among African leaders on the question of industrialisation. The proposed facility would serve a regional market spanning Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, pooling infrastructure to drive down costs and improve supply efficiency.
Dangote framed the vision in stark economic terms, arguing that the continent’s development model was structurally self-defeating. “By exporting raw materials and importing finished products, we are impoverishing our population,” he said, calling for a fundamental shift toward domestic processing.
Both Ruto and Museveni amplified the message. Ruto argued that Africa could no longer afford to sacrifice jobs and growth by selling unprocessed goods abroad. “Why would we fail? We have the raw materials, the market, the capital and the industrialists,” he said, indicating that talks on a shared regional refining framework were already underway.
Museveni was characteristically blunter. He described the continued export of raw, unprocessed resources as “near criminal,” contending that African economies haemorrhage enormous value at each stage of the supply chain by failing to refine, manufacture or add worth locally before export.
The ambition draws heavily from what Dangote’s Nigerian refinery has already demonstrated is possible. The Lagos-based facility has begun reshaping regional fuel dynamics, exporting roughly 1.1 billion litres of aviation fuel to Europe and supplying more than 95 per cent of Nigeria’s domestic jet fuel demand, according to the Airline Operators of Nigeria — a contribution that has helped stabilise the country’s aviation sector amid global supply disruptions.
New trade data further illustrates the refinery’s regional footprint. Commerce between Nigeria and South Africa reached $2.16 billion, driven substantially by crude oil and refined product flows, with Pretoria increasingly positioning Lagos as a primary fuel supplier. Industry analysts estimate the refinery exported around 876,000 metric tonnes of jet fuel between March and April alone, cementing Nigeria’s emergence as a significant player in global fuel markets.
That success has not been without friction domestically. Air Peace chief executive Allen Onyema questioned why jet fuel prices had climbed by as much as 300 per cent despite the refinery’s steady output, pointing to what he described as inefficiencies embedded in the downstream distribution network — a challenge that planners of any East African expansion would need to address from the outset.
Beyond East Africa, Dangote signalled an even broader industrial push, disclosing plans to deploy up to $40 billion across refining, petrochemicals, fertiliser and manufacturing by 2030. He stressed, however, that capital at that scale could not flow without policy stability. “No investor will come without local leadership and domestic commitment,” he said, warning that governments must resist the temptation to shift rules mid-investment.
He also pressed for a parallel reform that he argued was quietly strangling intra-African commerce: visa restrictions. “With a European passport, you can move faster in Africa than being an African,” Dangote said, urging continent-wide adoption of visa-free travel as a prerequisite for serious economic integration.
Nigeria’s Raw Materials Research and Development Council has estimated that the country alone forfeits roughly $29 billion every year through raw material exports that leave without processing — a figure that underlines the systemic cost of the very model Dangote is now mobilising capital to dismantle.
If realised, the proposed East African refinery would stand as one of the most ambitious cross-border industrial undertakings in the continent’s history, with implications reaching well beyond energy — touching trade architecture, regional economic integration and the broader question of whether Africa can convert its resource wealth into durable industrial power.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah