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What Aliko Dangote said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
In an NTV Kenya interview, Aliko Dangote discussed his group's IPO, the upcoming Lamu refinery in Kenya, and related investments. He said demand for the IPO, from Kenya and Botswana alone, could fill the offering, and he plans to accommodate more shares and list the refinery on the Nairobi Stock Exchange to attract pan-African investors. He explained crude oil for the refinery will come from East African producers and the Middle East, and defended fossil fuels as necessary for Africa, citing that over 600 million people lack power. He detailed plans for the refinery: 700,000 barrels per day capacity, a 1,000-megawatt power plant (500 MW sold to the government), and $30 billion in revenue, with 60,000 jobs created. He took a swipe at activists, citing US and German coal use. He committed to recycling 100% of the refinery's water.
Key takeaways
The Lamu refinery will produce 700,000 barrels per day, with 60,000 permanent jobs on site.
Plans to list the Dangote East African refinery on the Nairobi Stock Exchange within 2-4 years.
The refinery will include a 1,000-megawatt power plant, half of which will be sold to the Kenyan government.
Crude for Lamu will come from East African producers and the Middle East, not just local sources.
The IPO will likely be expanded to meet demand from Kenya and Botswana alone.
Good evening and welcome back. Now, tomorrow the 30th of September 2026, Kenya embarks on its most ambitious foreign direct investment undertaking yet as groundbreaking takes place for the two trillion shillings East Africa Dangote refinery. The colossal undertaking is however not without skeptics and naysayers with a group of Lamu residents having filed a petition in the Malindi environment and land court challenging the project. The man behind the investment landmark Nigerian billionaire and Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote is in the country and sat down with NTV's Julian Zamboko to discuss a raft of issues. The conversation covers the group's ongoing initial public offer, concerns raised about potential adverse environmental and social impact, how the project moved from the initial plan for Tanga in Tanzania to Kenya, and also the planned listing of the Lamu refinery on the Nairobi Securities Exchange. Take a look.
Speaking to both institutional investors and retail investor, I get the sense that there's a lot of appetite for the IPO which is currently running and I would have expected you would have floated a lot more shares to be able to meet this appetite. Is there any further plan down the road?
Yeah, there is actually. You know, we'll try and see how much we can actually accommodate but we'll try as much as possible to accommodate more than what we have advertised. That is, you know, for sure we're taking to the regulators like what I said earlier on. I think the demand from Kenya and Botswana alone, you know, can actually fill what you are looking for but the main interest is actually, you know, to get as many shareholders as possible and I think going forward definitely we will try and do something very creative where we will try and accommodate a lot of our own brothers and sisters here in Africa and then the, you know, larger population outside Africa.
Mr. Dangote, looking at the Lamu refinery, there has been interest in terms of co-investing with the Dangote Group including from Kenya's national infrastructure fund. How much have you crowded in so far and how is the financing architecture looking like from a debt and equity perspective?
Well from equity I think we don't have any issue. We are almost done and Kenya of course we know is with us in this journey. Rwanda is with us and other countries too. They are coming up. I know that when we mooted the idea at the beginning, the president of Uganda already said that yes they will also invest. So I'm sure a lot of investment, you know, will be there. The 30% is even too small. You know, but we'll start from there. Because like what I said when we're operational we'll try and once we stabilize we'll try and list this Lamu refinery which is we call it Dangote East African refinery and that one will actually be listed here at the Nairobi stock exchange. There's quite a lot of changes and a lot of innovation going through all our exchanges. So I'm sure in the next 2, 3, 4 years our exchanges too are not going to be Mickey Mouse exchanges, they're going to be huge. There is depth in terms of size in terms of what kind of transactions you are going to be able to make within these exchanges. And the good thing about it is that they are collaborating among themselves. So if we are going to list in Nairobi, listing in Nairobi will give also an opportunity for somebody from Ethiopia, somebody from Nigeria, somebody from South Africa to be able to invest and that's what we are looking for so that, you know, that Africanism will be there where now we support each other and that's the only way that, you know, we grow.
Crude will come from all the East African countries that are producing. They will take their own asphy and then we'll bring it from Middle East, from everywhere. I mean, okay, because every country that, you know, on earth is looking for oil and that's why when people now say no, no, no, we're actually, you know, changing from this, I say okay, but from crude oil you produce 6,800 items. So if you are able to sort out the problem of jet fuel, gas oil which is diesel, and also gasoline, right, what about the rest of the 6,790 something items? How are you going to resolve that? They don't have substitute for now.
Dangote, A. (2026, September 29). Dangote: Lamu Refinery to source crude oil from East Africa and other markets like the Middle East [Interview transcript]. NTV Kenya. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2949364/
MLA
Aliko Dangote. "Dangote: Lamu Refinery to source crude oil from East Africa and other markets like the Middle East." NTV Kenya, 29 Sep. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2949364/.
BibTeX
@misc{dangote2026_2949364,
author = {Aliko Dangote},
title = {Dangote: Lamu Refinery to source crude oil from East Africa and other markets like the Middle East},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, NTV Kenya. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {sep},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2949364/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
