Dangote Industries has confirmed Kenya, not Tanzania, as the site for its planned 700,000-barrel-per-day East African oil refinery, ending months of uncertainty over the project’s location.
The refinery will be built on Lamu Island, off Kenya’s northern coast.
The decision was confirmed on Tuesday, July 7, 2026, by Edwin Devakumar, Group Vice President for Oil and Gas at Dangote Industries Limited, in on-record comments to Reuters and AFP.
Devakumar said the site has been identified, with soil testing under way and engineering and design work already started, and that construction is expected to take around 30 months once it begins. “Kenya was the choice from the beginning,” he told Reuters.
The project is estimated to cost KSH 2.5 trillion (approximately USD 19.3 billion), according to Dangote Industries.
Financing is planned through a combination of internally generated funds, corporate bond issuances, and proceeds from a future Initial Public Offering (IPO).
The Kenyan government has pledged seed capital of KSH 21.5 billion (approximately USD 166 million) toward the project, according to President William Ruto.
Once operational, the Lamu refinery would raise Dangote’s combined refining capacity across Africa to approximately 2.1 million barrels per day, alongside the company’s existing plant in Lagos, Nigeria.
The refinery is intended to supply refined petroleum products to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan and other East African markets, reducing the region’s reliance on imported fuel.
Dangote’s refinery in Lagos, the world’s largest single-train facility with a capacity of 650,000 bpd, was commissioned in 2023 and reached full production capacity in February 2026.
The company plans to more than double that plant’s capacity to 1.4 million bpd by 2028.
The Lamu site was chosen after months of regional back-and-forth.
At the inaugural Africa We Build Summit in Nairobi on April 23, 2026, Dangote pledged to build the refinery within four to five years if regional governments backed the project.
President Ruto initially proposed Tanzania’s Tanga port as the site for a joint East African refinery, a plan he presented publicly alongside Dangote and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.
Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan said she had not been consulted on the Tanga proposal before it was announced, and later raised the issue directly with President Ruto during his state visit to Dar es Salaam on May 4, 2026.
By May 10, 2026, Dangote told the Financial Times he was leaning toward Mombasa instead of Tanga, citing the Kenyan port’s greater depth and cargo handling capacity for very large crude carriers.
Lamu was ultimately selected over both Tanga and Mombasa as the final site.
Late last month, Dangote travelled to Tanzania to meet President Samia Suluhu Hassan and explain the Group’s decision to locate the refinery in Kenya, and invited Tanzania to participate as an investor in the Lamu project.
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