Headlines across eastern Africa were universally positive last month when, on April 23, it was announced that Aliko Dangote would oversee the construction of a 650,000 bpd capacity petroleum refinery in eastern Africa. Although he did not volunteer to finance it, only that he would “take the lead” in its construction, the mere involvement of Dangote—Africa’s richest man and owner/builder of Africa’s largest petroleum refinery—in the $17 billion project was enough to get the attention of the collective Western press.
Speaking on April 23 at the Africa We Build Summit in Nairobi, Kenyan President William Ruto said, “We’re going to have a joint refinery in Tanga to benefit all of us,” adding that the proposed refinery could process oil from four states: D.R.C., Kenya, South Sudan, and Uganda. For his part, Dangote said that “we will lead and we’ll make sure that the refinery is built within the next four or five years.”
Without being negated, the initial optimism has now been tinged with a certain regional rivalry, as Dangote has now announced that the planned location for the refinery has been shifted from Tanga, Tanzania, to Mombasa, Kenya. “I’m leaning more towards Mombasa, because Mombasa has a much larger, deeper port,” Dangote told Financial Times on May 10. “Kenyans consume more. It’s a bigger economy.” Tanga, although an undeveloped port city, is the designated end-point of the EACOP, or East African Crude Oil Pipeline. Mombasa, while three times larger (1.3 million population) and with a developed port city, has no oil infrastructure, save for storage.
