• Offers jobs to Lamu graduates, to train over 1,000 indigenes

• Reserves 30% equity for East African countries

• President Ruto projects 60,000 jobs, 1,000MW power

• Obasanjo, African leaders hail Dangote as industrialisation pathfinder

By Oluwayanmife Lucas

Africa’s drive for industrial self reliance received a major boost yesterday as Kenya President William Ruto and President/Chief Executive, Dangote Industries Limited, Aliko Dangote, joined African leaders to break ground on a $16 billion petroleum refinery and petrochemicals complex in Lamu, Kenya, designed to process 700,000 barrels of crude oil per day and serve markets across Eastern Africa.

The facility, which is expected to be delivered within 40 months, has an ambitious local content programme that will provide jobs for qualified Lamu graduates and train more than 1,000 young people from the county. Besides, 30 per cent equity in the 700,000 barrels per day refinery is being offered to East African countries, thereby opening the landmark project to regional ownership as part of a broader strategy to strengthen energy security and retain more of Africa’s wealth within the continent.

According to Dangote, the project would be executed at speed, assuring the gathering that the refinery would be completed within 40 months. He said the company had already begun mobilising equipment and technical resources for the project and would draw extensively from lessons learnt in delivering the Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lagos. He assured that the Kenyan refinery would be one of the fastest major projects undertaken by the Group, as the company seeks to demonstrate that African businesses can execute complex industrial projects at globally competitive scale and speed.

Dangote placed local participation at the heart of the project, announcing that qualified graduates from Lamu would be offered opportunities to work on the development, while more than 1,000 young people from the host communities would receive technical and vocational training to prepare them for jobs within the refinery and its emerging industrial ecosystem. The Group will establish a training school to develop the technical skills required by the refinery, with emphasis on equipping local young people to participate directly in construction and subsequent operations. Dangote said the objective was to ensure that the economic footprint of the investment extended well beyond the refinery.

“We want young Kenyans and East Africans with skills here. We want local businesses to become suppliers. We want entrepreneurs around this project,” he said. “For me, the true measure of this project will not be the height of these towers or the number of barrels it processes.”
Instead, he said its success would also be measured by young Kenyans acquiring engineering and technical skills, local entrepreneurs building businesses around the investment and communities enjoying improved livelihoods.

“Industrialisation must have a human face. It must create dignity. It must create jobs. It must create opportunities. It must create hope,” Dangote said.

President Ruto put the cost of the development at $16 billion, or about KSh2 trillion, describing it as a “generational undertaking” designed to serve not only Kenya but the wider Eastern African region. The project is designed to process about 700,000 barrels of crude oil daily and generate up to 1,000 megawatts of electricity. It will also include polypropylene and base oil production as part of an integrated refining and petrochemicals complex.

Ruto reinforced the employment commitment, saying current projections envisage about 60,000 direct and indirect jobs from the development. The President directed technical and vocational institutions and universities to prepare welders, technicians, engineers and managers for the opportunities, insisting that young people from Lamu and neighbouring communities must be given a fair opportunity to compete for the jobs. Ruto said the construction phase alone was expected to inject more than KSh2 billion monthly in wages into the economy, with the money circulating through shops, hotels, restaurants, transport, housing and other businesses.

In another significant move towards regional economic integration, Dangote disclosed that 30 per cent of the refinery’s equity would be made available to East African countries, allowing governments in the region to participate in the ownership and future value created by the project. He said Kenya and Rwanda had already moved quickly to take advantage of the opportunity. The ownership model fits into Dangote’s broader argument that African countries and investors should not merely host major industrial projects but should increasingly participate in their ownership and prosperity. Dangote said the refinery had been designed as a regional asset serving Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other markets.

“This refinery is therefore not simply about one country. It is about a region,” he said.
The industrialist said Africa could no longer afford an economic model under which crude oil, minerals and agricultural commodities were exported while the continent imported the finished products derived from them.

“Africa cannot build lasting prosperity by exporting what it has and importing what it needs,” he said. “We must refine more of what we produce. We must process more of what we produce. We must retain more value here at home in Africa.”

The Governor of Lamu County, Issa Timamy also used the groundbreaking to condemn attempts to stop the project through litigation, describing those behind the move as working against an investment capable of transforming the economic fortunes of the county. Addressing residents partly in Swahili, the Governor said those who had gone to court against the development did not represent the aspirations of the people of Lamu. He argued that opponents of the project were seeking to frustrate an investment that could provide opportunities for thousands of young people and insisted that residents would not allow the county’s development prospects to be undermined.

The Governor maintained that the project would go ahead and be completed, while calling on young people and businesses in the county to prepare themselves for the opportunities that would accompany the investment. He said Lamu had for too long been rich in history, culture and natural resources but left behind in the march of development, adding that the refinery offered the county an opportunity to become a major investment and industrial destination.

He nevertheless stressed the importance of protecting Lamu’s mangroves, fishing grounds, coastline and cultural heritage, calling for responsible development that would allow industrialisation and environmental protection to coexist.

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo led other African leaders in celebrating Dangote’s emergence as one of the continent’s leading champions of industrialisation, recalling his evolution from trading and importation into large scale manufacturing. Obasanjo said the transformation demonstrated the importance of African governments creating the right environment for indigenous entrepreneurs to invest, manufacture and compete at scale. For the former President, the Lamu investment represented a further expansion of that industrialisation philosophy from West Africa into East Africa.

Obasanjo said he was particularly pleased to witness the project because of its potential to deepen economic integration between the two regions and demonstrate what African entrepreneurship, supported by purposeful political leadership, could accomplish. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Africa could not continue exporting raw materials while surrendering the jobs and wealth associated with processing them elsewhere. He backed the regional ownership proposal, describing the opportunity for East African countries to acquire equity in the refinery as a smart approach to ensuring that the region participated not merely as a market but also as an owner.
Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, said the refinery would strengthen East Africa’s energy security and reduce its vulnerability to disruptions in global petroleum markets.

He said Dangote’s record in cement, fertiliser and petroleum refining had demonstrated that African industrial enterprises could operate at global scale. “East Africa is not only a market. It is a place to produce, to build and to create value,” Abiy said.

• Sustains Naira for crude supply to Dangote

• Remittance to government hits N22.3tr

• Refineries to operate when profitable

By Oluwayanmife Lucas

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has posted N7.2trillion Profit After Tax (PAT), rising 33 per cent in 2025 from the N5.4 trillion recorded in 2024.

The state-run oil company also said payment of Naira for crude oil supply to Dangote Refinery is still in force.

During the period under review, revenue was N34.5 trillion as earnings per share was N35.9 while royalties and other remittances to the government soared 39 per cent to N22.3 trillion.
Its Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) Bashir Bayo Ojulari disclosed this at the 2025 Audited Financial Statement Media Parley in Abuja.
He said: “The central result is clear, profit after tax rose 33 per cent, from N5.4 trillion in 2024 to 7.2 trillion Naira in 2025.

“Revenue was N34.5 trillion. We also recorded earnings per share of 35.9 Naira, while taxes, royalties and other remittances to the government rose 39 per cent to N22.3 trillion.”

The GCEO blamed revenue decline on the crude oil price crash in the period under review.
Ojulari said: “The revenue declined as crude oil price fell, as you recall, in 2025, but we also had some decline that resulted from wide product volume reduction, following the market regulation, as you know, with the removal of subsidy.”

Continuing, the NNPCL boss said the profit grew because the firm improved the way it operated and maintained discipline across its businesses.
Ojulari also attributed the profit to the blockage of revenue leakages and the stoppage of wastages. Operationally, according to him, crude oil and condensate production reached a five-year high of 1.77 million barrels per day (bpd) at its peak.

Nigerian gas supply, said Ojulari, reached a three-year high of 7.2 billion standard cubic feet per day.
He explained that the gains reflect sustained attention to company assets, infrastructure and focus on delivering visible results.

He promised to compel all NNPC debtors to settle their liabilities.

The GCEO said the national refineries will become operational when they are profitable.
He said through NNPCL technical equity partnership model significant progress has been made.
Ojulari said NNPC has undertaken a three-month intrusive onsite due diligence with over 34 of the partners’ top engineers as it now looks forward to completing the report with the same objective of having profitable and sustainable plants.

He said: “And we are now looking at concluding that report. And the objective remains the same.
“What we want going forward is to have a refinery that is self-sustaining, that is profitable and is sustainable. And that’s what we’re looking for. We believe that in the not too distant future, we will be able to define that pathway forward.

“We learned a lot through those onsite visits. And I think we are more confident that we will have a pathway very soon in terms of how to bring those refineries back to sustainable and profitable operation. Our ambitions are specific and measurable.”

He said the partners, who are Chinese, are reviewing the refineries at no cost to Nigeria.
The model is to involve them in the equity of the refineries for them to be committed with the spirit of ownership.
He recalled that he visited China where he toured their petrochemicals plants that operate at 100 per of their design capacity.

The NNPCL boss announced that the Ajaokuta Kaduna Kano (AKK) gas pipeline has been completed with all the weldings.

He revealed that the project is at the stage of fixing the connections at Abuja, Ajaokuta and Kaduna.

He stressed that the main line has been done as NNPCL is now focusing on the impact of the project on the society.

Ojulari added: “The impact starts when gas starts going to power or going into the industry. “And that is why you probably notice we have been a little bit quiet recently because the next milestone is to say gas is flowing and we are seeing gas transmitting into more jobs, more opportunities.”

The GCEO also revealed that the OB3 line, that is the Obiapu, Obiropo and Oben gas pipeline has been grappling with a lot of challenges over several years.

According to him, NNPCL is yet to fix a timeline for its Initial Public Offer (IPO) as the decision is at the instance of the shareholders.
On how to achieve 3million barrels per day in 2030, he recalled that this year, NNPCL signed a new $15 billion to $21 billion Production Sharing Contract (PSC) for Bonga Southwest that is meant to enable final investment in decisions maybe by 2028.

He also cited an example of the Bonga North FID in late 2024 among other projects that would result in the attainment of 3 million barrels per day production.

Speaking on the Naira for crude supply to Dangote, Ojulari said: “Crude supply obligation to Dangote team, yes, still going on. We still deliver the crude in naira and then crude in dollar.”
He added that the arrangement for the supply of crude oil in Naira is for limited cargoes.
Ojulari stressed that NNPCL also supplies extra cargo to the refinery in dollars
“And let me also explain that, very important, because I know a lot of questions have come. We have a commitment to supply crude in naira, for a specific number of cargoes, typically. But also the extra crude that is available, we only supply in dollar,” he said.

Ojulari also explained that crude oil is sold in dollars because all the contracts in the industry are in dollars.

The NNPCL boss said: “The reason for that is that our commitments are in dollar. The rigs that are drilling for us, we pay them in dollars. The projects that we install, we pay in dollars.”
According to him, it does not make sense selling crude oil in Naira to purchase forex to pay in dollars instead of selling it directly in the same currency it is vended internationally.
NNPCL accepts Naira for crude from Dangote because the Federal Government approved it, he said.
Aside from that approval, Ojulari stressed that all other crude oil transactions are in dollars.

He said: “Our cash home to our operators are paid in dollars. So there’s no point receiving naira and then going to send that bank or somewhere to then buy dollar to pay, right?

“So that is the reason that you see that apart from the crude to naira, which was approved by federal government, we maintain that, right?

“For all the other transactions we do are in dollar because our commitments are in dollar as well. So that’s why, otherwise, we would have probably done more, right?

“But what it would mean is that we would do that and then go and buy dollar to pay for our own commitments.”

The GCEO said the cost of crude oil production responds in direct proportion with the rise its price.
Ojulari also confirmed that Nigeria is still servicing the project Gazelle, which is the crude oil backed forward -sale finance facility.
“I think the other quick one is around, you talked about Project Gazelle, and specifically Project Gazelle is still on.”

• Lamu refinery groundbreaking holds today

• Ruto: We have market, capital, expertise, why would we fail?

• Dangote opens businesses to African ownership, targets $100bn revenue

• Kenya regulator reports strong appetite for refinery IPO

By Oluwayanmife Lucas

The drive for Africa’s industrialisation received a further boost today as the President of dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Aliko Dangote, takes his continental industrialisation drive deeper into East Africa, declaring that the continent must mobilise its own capital, build at global scale and increasingly own the businesses transforming its economy.

Dangote, who disclosed plans to invest an additional $50 billion across Africa after committing more than $25 billion to existing businesses, said the next phase of the Group’s expansion would combine massive industrial investment with a deliberate opening of its businesses to African ownership through the capital markets.

The declaration came in Nairobi, Kenya, on the eve of the groundbreaking of the Dangote East Africa Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals, scheduled for today in Lamu, Kenya, a project Kenyan officials said emerged from high level discussions about ending Africa’s historic role as an exporter of raw materials and importer of finished products.

Speaking during a fireside chat with the Chief Executive Officer of the Nairobi Securities Exchange, Frank Mwiti, at the “Dangote Petroleum Refinery IPO High Level Investor Engagement” organised by the NSE, Dangote said Africa could no longer afford “baby steps” if it intended to compete globally.

“We have already invested more than $25 billion, but right now, we’re going ahead to invest an additional $50 billion,” Dangote said. “We want to create and generate wealth for Africans, to make sure that we defend our markets. And the only way to defend the market is not to do baby steps. It’s better we do big scale,” Dangote said.

He explained that the scale of that ambition will move into sharper focus today when the groundbreaking takes place in Lamu, opening a new chapter in the DIL’s drive to replicate in East Africa the industrial ecosystem created around the 700,000 barrels per day Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lagos.

The groundbreaking will proceed against the backdrop of a legal challenge over portions of the proposed project land in Lamu. The Malindi Environment and Land Court has ordered that the status quo be maintained on the disputed land until October 14 following a petition by 133 residents asserting rights over the property, although the court did not stop today’s groundbreaking ceremony.

Dangote, who said he learnt of the development from a media report shortly after arriving in Kenya, appeared unfazed by the legal challenge, describing such disputes as part of the realities of executing major projects. Drawing on the Group’s experience in Senegal, where one of its investments also faced litigation that eventually reached the Supreme Court.

President Williams Ruto’s chief economic advisor, David Ndii, disclosed that the Lamu project grew out of discussions among African policymakers, financiers and business leaders on how to deploy the continent’s natural resources for industrialisation rather than extraction.
According to Ndii, those discussions identified petroleum refining as one of the strategic opportunities for East Africa and led to engagement with Dangote, President Ruto, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and other regional leaders.

He said a closed-door meeting in April examined an addressable East African market for finished petroleum products estimated at about 20 million metric tonnes annually, potentially rising to 30 million tonnes. At the conclusion of the discussions, Ndii recalled, Ruto distilled the proposition into three questions: Was there a market for the products?

Was African capital available to finance the investment? And was there an entrepreneur with proven capacity to execute a refinery of that scale? With the answers in the affirmative, the Kenyan President asked: “Why would we fail?” Ndii said the answer in the room was equally emphatic: “We cannot fail.”

He traced the intellectual roots of the project to an earlier Nairobi meeting convened by President and Chief Executive of Africa Finance Corporation, Samaila Zubairu, which challenged African leaders to reconsider an economic model under which infrastructure readily attracts international financing when designed to evacuate raw materials, but struggles to secure capital when intended to process those resources locally.

Quoting a phrase from Zubairu that he said had stayed with him, Ndii declared: “We export our minerals FOB and import inflation CIF.” He said the Lamu project represented an attempt to reverse that equation.

The East African expansion is also being tied to a broader push by Dangote to change who owns Africa’s biggest businesses. Dangote told investors that the ongoing public offer of Dangote Petroleum Refinery was not primarily driven by a need to raise cash but by a desire to democratise wealth and allow ordinary Africans to participate in the prosperity created by the continent’s industrialisation.

“It’s not because we need the money. No. It’s because we want to share this prosperity with everybody,” he said. “The real purpose is for us to democratise wealth making.” He disclosed that the Group was prepared to progressively release more equity in its businesses as investor demand grows.
Dangote went further, declaring that all the Group’s operating businesses would eventually be opened increasingly to public ownership. “I’ve said that all the companies that we operate from today, eventually all of them will be owned by the people,” he said. The industrialist disclosed that a new shipping business being developed by the Group would eventually be taken to the capital market, while its expanding fertiliser operations would also be opened to public participation. “Let people own it,” he said.

Dangote said the Group’s ambition was to create millions of African shareholders who would benefit not only from dividends but also from capital appreciation as the underlying businesses grow. He also declared that when the Lamu refinery matures for public ownership, it should be listed in Kenya rather than automatically taken to the Nigerian market. “If tomorrow we are going to have the refinery here in Lamu to be listed, we don’t have to list it in Nigeria. We shouldn’t list it in Nigeria. We should list it here,” he said.

The proposal reinforced calls at the engagement for deeper integration of African capital markets to enable savings generated in one part of the continent to finance productive assets elsewhere. Chairman of Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority, Ugas Mohammed, disclosed that Kenyan investors had already demonstrated significant appetite for the Dangote Petroleum Refinery IPO, with the regulator receiving enquiries daily since the offer opened on September 14. “One question” had been recurring consistently, Mohammed said: “How can we participate?”
He said the interest demonstrated growing demand among Kenyan and East African investors for opportunities beyond their domestic markets and strengthened the case for mechanisms allowing investors to access securities issued elsewhere on the continent. “A new frontier of Africa’s economic sovereignty is beginning,” the CMA Chairman declared.

Mohammed said African regulators needed to develop deeper, more efficient, transparent and interconnected markets capable of mobilising long term capital for infrastructure, energy, manufacturing and other productive sectors. He disclosed that Kenya’s CMA, Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission and other African regulators had signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at creating mechanisms to facilitate greater cross border investment and trading.

NSE Chairman Tom Muluwa described the refinery offer and Dangote’s wider industrial expansion as evidence that Africa could move from the margins of the global economy to competing at scale. “Africa’s time to lead the world has come,” Muluwa declared.
He said the continent had lost too much time and could no longer afford incremental responses to challenges requiring investments of global scale. “We agree with you that we cannot continue taking baby steps. We must go big and help solve the world’s challenges,” he said.
Muluwa said Africa had the resources to play a much larger role in global energy and food security, pointing to Dangote’s refinery and fertiliser investments as examples of the scale required. “We must industrialise Africa,” he said, adding: “We cannot continue exporting jobs and importing poverty.”
Mwiti framed the Nairobi engagement around what he described as a defining question for the continent: “Can Africans finance Africa? And can Africans own the great businesses that are transforming our continent?” He said Africa had for decades exported capital and savings while watching some of its greatest investment opportunities from the sidelines.

The Dangote Petroleum Refinery IPO, he said, offered an opportunity to rewrite that story. “The conversation is changing from what Mr Dangote has built to what Africans can own together,” Mwiti said.
Dangote said the ownership push formed part of a much bigger ambition to build African companies capable of competing with the world’s largest corporations. Under the Group’s Vision 2030, he said, Dangote is targeting more than $100 billion in annual revenue.

“We want to make sure that, for the first time, an African company will actually be out there with over $100 billion of revenue,” he said. “This thing is possible.”
He said the Group was also undertaking a major expansion of its fertiliser operations, with an ambition to reach about 12 million tonnes of capacity and become the world’s biggest fertiliser producers. Dangote argued that Africa’s development would remain constrained unless African capital increasingly financed African enterprise.
“People like us should allow our money to remain in our continent to develop our continent,” he said.

He urged governments to strengthen African financial institutions, citing AFC’s financing of Dangote projects as evidence that institutions with a deep understanding of the continent could move more decisively on transformative investments. The industrialist also challenged Africa’s emerging entrepreneurs to think beyond the limitations historically imposed on the continent.

Recalling that he started in 1978 as a domestic trader selling about four trucks of cement, Dangote told entrepreneurs in the room that his own success should not be regarded as the ceiling of African ambition. “You can become bigger than Dangote,” he said.
Ndii said that shift in mindset could ultimately prove as important as the physical infrastructure now rising across the continent.

He commended Dangote for making Africans “think big” and see the possibility of competing at global scale, the presidential adviser said the industrialist’s place in the continent’s economic history could extend beyond the factories he built.
“When that history is written,” Ndii said, “I think Mr Dangote will occupy a special place in terms of opening up Africa and opening up our minds to see possibilities, not limits.”