IN SHORT: Aliko Dangote told the Financial Times on May 10 that he is leaning toward Mombasa in Kenya rather than Tanzania’s Tanga as the site for a proposed East African oil refinery, citing Mombasa’s deeper port and Kenya’s larger consumer market. The project is estimated to cost $15-17 billion and would process 650,000 barrels per day, matching the capacity of his Lagos refinery, currently the world’s largest. A final decision depends on Kenyan government support and anti-dumping protection. “The ball is in the hands of President Ruto,” Dangote said.
Dangote is proposing to replicate the world’s largest single-train oil refinery in East Africa, and he has told the Financial Times he wants to build it in Mombasa, a choice that would transform Kenya into the continent’s dominant petroleum processing and distribution hub and that has already created a diplomatic rift with Tanzania, whose president was not consulted before the project was announced.
The proposal emerged at the Africa We Build Summit in Nairobi in late April, where East African leaders discussed a regional refinery to reduce dependence on Middle East fuel imports. The Hormuz conflict, which has disrupted global oil supply and driven African fuel prices to record levels, has given the regional refinery idea urgent commercial and political impetus.
- Dangote’s preference for Mombasa over Tanga is based on hard infrastructure logic. “I’m leaning more towards Mombasa because Mombasa has a much larger, deeper port,” he told the Financial Times. “Kenyans consume more. It’s a bigger economy.” The Mombasa port already serves as East Africa’s primary fuel import terminal, with distribution pipelines and road tanker networks serving Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and eastern DRC. A refinery at Mombasa would slot directly into that existing logistics infrastructure rather than requiring new pipeline construction from a greenfield site.
- The original plan, announced by President Ruto at the Nairobi summit in late April, involved a refinery at Tanzania’s Tanga port that would process crude from Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan and the DRC. That announcement triggered what Billionaires.Africa described as a “diplomatic rift”: Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan publicly rebuked Ruto during his state visit to Dar es Salaam on May 4, saying she had not been consulted before the project was made public. “Why did you announce a refinery in Tanga, and I know nothing about it?” she reportedly asked Ruto directly. The incident exposed a gap between Kenya’s ambition to position itself as East Africa’s energy hub and Tanzania’s expectation of consultation on projects located on its territory.
- The financial scale of the Mombasa proposal is extraordinary. At $15-17 billion, it would rank as one of the largest private investments ever made on the African continent, comparable only to Dangote’s own Lagos refinery at $20 billion. Dangote has demonstrated that he can finance and execute at this scale. But the Lagos refinery took more than a decade from announcement to commissioning. The East African refinery, if approved, would not be operational before the early 2030s at the earliest.
- Dangote’s key condition is anti-dumping protection. He needs the Kenyan government to ensure that imported refined products cannot undercut the domestically produced fuel that his refinery would generate. Without that protection, the commercial economics of a 650,000 barrel per day refinery in an open import market are difficult to sustain. The Lagos refinery achieved anti-dumping protection through Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act framework. Kenya would need equivalent legislation. Ruto’s response to that condition will determine whether the project advances.
- East Africa’s fuel import dependence is the structural driver behind the proposal’s political momentum. The region imports every litre of refined petroleum it consumes, primarily from the Middle East and Asian refining centres. The Hormuz conflict has demonstrated viscerally how vulnerable that supply chain is. A regional refinery processing African crude eliminates the Middle East exposure entirely and gives East Africa genuine energy sovereignty, the same transformation the Lagos refinery has delivered for Nigeria.
- Angola’s $470 million Cabinda refinery (30,000 barrels per day), owned primarily by UK-based Gemcorp Capital, began supplying domestic and foreign markets in the same week as Dangote’s Mombasa announcement. The timing underlines that Africa’s downstream refining buildout is happening in multiple locations simultaneously, driven by the same Hormuz-induced urgency.
Dangote: “That refinery will process oil from the DRC, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda.” The multi-country feedstock model mirrors the original Tanga proposal but positions Kenya’s infrastructure as the anchor rather than Tanzania’s.
The Bigger Picture: A $17 billion refinery in Mombasa would be the most consequential single private investment in East African history and would establish Kenya as the petroleum processing and distribution hub for a region of 400 million people. The commercial logic is compelling. The political conditions, anti-dumping protection, government support for land and infrastructure, and a resolution of the Tanzania diplomatic friction, are all manageable. The historical precedent, the Lagos refinery, demonstrates that Dangote can execute at this scale when the policy framework aligns. The question is not whether East Africa needs a regional refinery. It is whether Ruto and Dangote can structure the terms that make Mombasa the site where it gets built.
Source: Al Jazeera / Billionaires.Africa / Capital FM via AllAfrica, May 10-13, 2026
