Dangote Refinery to end Nigeria's fuel imports, set to supply West and Central Africa

Speaking at the Africa CEO Forum Annual Summit in Kigali, Rwanda on Friday, May 17, Africa's richest man detailed how his refinery can produce everything that is gasoline or fuel.

Dangote said that his refinery can also provide fuel for Africa's aviation demands, declaring that his country, Nigeria has no reason to import gasoline from any part of the world from June.

"Right now, Nigeria has no cause to import anything apart from gasoline and by sometime in June, within the next four or five weeks, Nigeria shouldn’t import anything like gasoline; not one drop of a litre. We have enough gasoline to give to at least the entire West Africa, and diesel to give to West Africa and Central Africa. We have enough aviation fuel to give to the entire continent and also export some to Brazil and Mexico,” he is quoted by Nigerian media Punch Newspaper.

The Nigerian billionaire explained that it is not normal for Africa to continuously import from other continents when the region has enough raw materials to make it self-sufficient.

“Today, our polypropylene and our polyethene will meet the entire demand of Africa and we are doing base oil, which is like engine oil, we are doing linear benzyl, which is raw material to produce detergent. We have 1.4 billion people in the population, nobody is producing that in Africa. “So, all the raw materials for our detergents are imported. We are producing that raw material to make Africa self-sufficient. As I said, give us three or a maximum of four years and Africa will not, I repeat, not import any more fertilizer from anywhere. We will make Africa self-sufficient in potash, phosphate, and urea, we are at three million tonnes and in the next twenty months, we will be at six million tonnes of urea which is the entire capacity of Egypt. We are getting there,” he added.

Dangote refinery, commissioned in Nigeria in February, has since made efforts to improve the availability of fuel in the country. The refinery is reported to be Africa’s biggest oil refinery and the world’s biggest single-train facility and produces 650,000 barrels of gasoline per day.

“Our capacity is too big for Nigeria, but it would also supply West Africa, Central Africa and South Africa. We have 650,000 barrels per day, 1 million tonnes of polypropylene, we have 590,000 carbon black, that is the raw materials ink, dyes and co. We are expanding more. This is the first phase and we are going out to the next phase which will start early next year,” Dangote said.