The planned public offering of shares in Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals could usher in a new era of broader African ownership of strategic industrial assets, African and international leaders have said.
The leaders, who spoke at the 2026 ADF Africa Diaspora Leadership Programme Young Global Leaders Convening in Lagos on Thursday, said the proposed IPO would enable individuals, pension funds, institutional investors and the African diaspora to participate directly in the value generated by the refinery.
President and Chief Executive of Dangote Industries Limited, Aliko Dangote, said the decision to take the refinery to the public market was driven by a desire to spread its prosperity beyond its promoters.
“I want drivers, cooks, the woman selling food on the streets of Ghana, Rwanda and South Africa to invest so they can share in this prosperity,” Dangote said during a fireside chat.
“We are doing the IPO to pass this prosperity to Africans.”
According to him, industrialisation rather than personal wealth accumulation remained the central objective of his business activities.
“I am wealthy, not rich. A wealthy man creates wealth, while a rich man makes money and keeps it for himself,” he said.
“What keeps me going is that we must industrialise Africa. There is no amount of hurdle that will stop us. If you put a brick wall in front of me, I will make a hole and pass through.”
Dangote said he expected the refinery to grow into Africa’s largest company by size and profitability, pointing to the transformation of companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla and Alibaba after accessing public capital markets.
“By the grace of God, this refinery will be the largest company in Africa by size and profitability,” he said.
He added that the wider objective was to demonstrate that businesses capable of competing globally could be built in Africa while attracting more capital into the continent.
“Our job is to derisk Africa, encourage more investors, create jobs and create more opportunities. That is how we will transform Africa,” he said.
Former United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and Co-Chair of The Africa Center, Ambassador Jendayi Frazer, said the IPO could help align African capital with African production by creating a wider ownership base for the refinery.
“The refinery connects us all through the proposed IPO that creates broader ownership,” Frazer said.
She said the offering could bring together pension funds, institutional investors, individual savers and members of the diaspora to invest in Africa’s industrial growth.
“It can broaden participation in the value created by African industry. It can connect investment with African production to scale with African institutions, pension funds, savers, individual investors, including the African diaspora coming into this, owning a stake in Africa’s growth,” she said.
Frazer said the refinery had implications beyond the energy sector, arguing that its capacity to process crude oil domestically had altered perceptions of Africa’s economic and geopolitical capabilities.
“Economic power is not only what a country possesses, it’s what it can create, process, finance, transport and sell. Supply chains, energy systems and capital markets shape sovereignty,” she said.
She described the project as evidence of what could be achieved when African capital, expertise and ambition were combined with effective partnerships and execution.
“Africa does not need the world’s permission to build,” Frazer said. “And the world, if it comes as a partner and not a prospector, will find that Africa has already started.”
Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, said the next phase of African industrial development should focus not only on creating large companies but also on creating a broad base of ordinary shareholders.
“The next frontier of African scale is not another giant. It is a thousand ordinary owners: the teacher in Enugu, the nurse in New Jersey and the pension fund in Nairobi, each holding a piece of the strategic assets of their own continent,” he said.
Sanwo-Olu described the refinery as an example of how private-sector investment could overcome infrastructure deficits that have historically constrained large-scale industrial projects in Nigeria.
“Mr Dangote did not build a refinery. He built a country around a refinery, and then he built the refinery,” he said.
“There was no port that could receive the equipment, so he built a jetty. There was not enough power, so he built a power plant.”
The governor noted that the refinery had survived significant construction challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic and sharp currency depreciation, despite doubts over whether it would eventually become operational.
“It runs,” he said. “Africa can build at market-changing scale. Not in theory. Here.”
Sanwo-Olu, however, said the bigger test for policymakers was whether the success of the refinery would lead to an environment in which subsequent industrial projects could be delivered more easily.
“The true measure of this refinery is not that it stands. It is whether the next one is easier,” he said.
Group Executive Director, Commercial Operations, Dangote Industries Limited, Fatima Aliko Dangote, said Africa needed to shift from being primarily a source of raw materials and talent to becoming a continent that builds, owns and finances productive assets.
“This is more than a Dangote story. It is a story about what Africa must build, what Africa must own, and what this generation of leaders must help make possible,” she said.
Fatima Dangote, who is also a Trustee of the Aliko Dangote Foundation, Trustee of The Africa Center in New York and Patron of the Aliko Dangote Young Global Leaders Fellowship, said the ultimate measure of sustainable development was its impact on people's lives.
Meanwhile, Afreximbank said the refinery represented a practical expression of its objective of supporting African industrialisation and increasing intra-African trade.
Speaking on behalf of the bank’s President and Chairman of the Board of Directors, Dr George Elombi, Director, Creatives and Diaspora, Intra-African Trade and Export Development Bank, Temwa Roosevelt Gondwe, said Afreximbank had underwritten $2.5 billion of the $4 billion syndicated loan used to support the refinery.
He added that the bank subsequently provided a $1 billion working capital facility.
“Unless we produce, we cannot trade. Unless we capture value, we cannot prosper,” Gondwe said.
He said the refinery demonstrated the importance of processing African resources on the continent rather than exporting raw materials and importing finished products.
The gathering also showcased the Aliko Dangote Foundation’s contribution to developing Africa’s next generation of leaders.
The Young Global Leaders Aliko Dangote Fellowship, a partnership between the Foundation and the World Economic Forum, has supported more than 130 young African leaders over the past 15 years to participate in the global Young Global Leaders community.
Among those who commended the initiative were Founder and Chief Executive Officer of I Am The Code, Lady Mariéme Jamme; Chief Executive Officer of African Leadership Academy, Hatim Eltayeb; and Kenyan technologist and open-source advocate, Angela Oduor Lungati.
Leave a Reply