Dangote Breaks Ground on Lamu Refinery
Aliko Dangote and Kenyan President William Ruto broke ground on Wednesday on a $16 billion refinery and petrochemicals complex in Lamu, a 700,000-barrel-a-day plant Dangote said would be finished in 40 months and opened, in part, to East African governments as owners rather than only as customers.
The Dangote East Africa Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals is meant to supply Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other markets. Dangote said the company had already begun moving equipment and technical teams and would use what it learned at the Lekki plant in Lagos. Thirty percent of the equity is being offered to East African countries; Kenya and Rwanda have already moved to take a stake. “This refinery is therefore not simply about one country. It is about a region,” he said.
Ruto called the project, put at about KSh2 trillion, a “generational undertaking.” The complex is also designed to generate up to 1,000 megawatts and to produce polypropylene and base oil. Current projections put direct and indirect jobs at about 60,000, with construction wages alone expected to put more than KSh2 billion a month into the local economy. He told technical colleges and universities to train welders, technicians, engineers and managers, and said young people from Lamu and neighbouring communities must be able to compete for the work.
Dangote said qualified Lamu graduates would be offered roles, and that more than 1,000 young people from host communities would be trained at a vocational school the group plans to build. Success, he said, would be measured less by towers and barrels than by skills, local suppliers and livelihoods. “Industrialisation must have a human face.” He argued that Africa could no longer export crude, minerals and crops and import the finished goods made from them. “We must retain more value here at home in Africa.”
Lamu Governor Issa Timamy condemned court attempts to stop the project, saying the litigants did not speak for the county, and insisted the work would proceed while mangroves, fishing grounds, the coastline and cultural heritage were protected. Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, who led other leaders at the ceremony, traced Dangote’s path from trading into manufacturing and said governments had to make room for local investors to compete at scale. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni backed the equity offer as a way for East Africa to be an owner, not only a market. Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed said the plant would strengthen regional energy security: “East Africa is not only a market. It is a place to produce, to build and to create value.”
The timetable is aggressive, and the lawsuits are already filed. What was broken on Wednesday was ground, not a finished plant. The test Dangote set himself is whether a second 700,000-barrel refinery can be standing in Lamu in a little over three years, with neighbours on the share register.
