After pledging to build a 650,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery at Tanzania’s port of Tanga, Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote has indicated he now favours Kenya’s Mombasa as the preferred location for the project, according to the Financial Times.
Dangote had committed to the Tanga refinery at the Africa We Build Summit in Nairobi on April 23, 2026, in the presence of Kenyan President William Ruto and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, conditional on government support.
He now leans toward Mombasa primarily because of its deeper and larger port infrastructure, and because Kenya represents a bigger market with higher fuel consumption than Tanzania.
The cost of the proposed facility remains unchanged at between USD 15 billion and USD 17 billion, with a processing capacity of 650,000 barrels per day.
For the project to proceed, he said he would require the host government to provide land, some regional financing, and protection against what he described as the dumping of cheap fuel from countries such as Russia and India, adding that no refinery in the world could survive without such protection and that if an agreement were reached, construction could begin this year.
He also left the door open for Tanzania, stating he could still build the refinery there. The final decision, he said, rests entirely with President Ruto, according to Reuters.
Industry analysts have speculated that he may be using the competing locations to negotiate a better deal from both governments.
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who was not present at the April 23 summit in Nairobi, subsequently stated publicly that she had not been consulted before the announcement, and told President Ruto directly that she had no prior knowledge of a plan that placed a major industrial project on Tanzanian soil.
Ruto, speaking at Tanzania’s parliament in Dodoma during a state visit, defended the announcement as part of broader regional consultations on industrialisation and the joint use of East Africa’s natural resources, according to Reuters.
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