Dangote Refinery signals Africa’s business viability —AfDB

DR Akinwumi Adesina has said that the 24 billion dollars Dangote Petrochemicals Complex in Lagos signalled Africa’s potential to attract global capital for large and globally competitive industrial platforms.

Adesina, the outgoing President of African Development Bank (AfDB) stated this at the 2025 Standard Chartered Bank Africa Summit recently held in Lagos.

The text of his presentation at the event was obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

Adesina said the refinery, now supplying petroleum and petrochemicals to the Nigerian, other African and global markets showed Africa’s business viability and profitability in tilting global capital.

He underscored the need for African global corporates to be strongly supported with financing at scale, to establish global industrial platforms that will support Africa to be dominant players in critical areas in which it has comparative advantage.

NAN reported that the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals is a 650,000 barrels per day (BPD) integrated refinery.

Located in the Lekki Free Zone of Ibeju Lekki Lagos, it is Africa’s biggest oil refinery and the world’s biggest single-train facility.

To buttress Adesina’s position, African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) on Tuesday announced that it signed a 1.35 billion dollar financing facility in favour of the refinery.

The facility, according to the Continental Bank, is part of a larger, approximately 4 billion dollar syndicated financing arrangement for Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Africa’s largest industrial conglomerate.

Afreximbank said the financing, one of the largest syndicated loans in recent African financial markets, will refinance capital expended on constructing the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals Complex.

Adesina also gave example of the 20 billion dollar Liquified Natural Gas project in Mozambique as another African business entity that attracted global capital for large and globally competitive industrial platforms.

The LNG project, according to him ,attracted the largest foreign direct investment when it was structured.

Other large corporates identified by Adesina include Goldfield Limited, one of the world’s largest gold mining firms. In South Africa with market capitalisation of 17.46 billion dollar.

Naspers Limited, a South African multinational internet, technology and multimedia holding company with market capitalisation of 14.56 billion dollar.

Others are Vodacom Group with market capitalisation of 12.47 billion dollars and MTN Group with market capitalisation 10.99 billion dollars.

Adesina also revealed that, with Africa accounting for 30 percent of all mineral reserves globally, the continent will shape the future of global energy transition.

According to him, with huge shares of critical minerals such as cobalt, platinum, manganese, the continent will shape the future of manufacturing of electric vehicles, mobile phones, computers and defense systems.

Adesina said that the rising and intense geopolitical jostling to access these critical minerals is already shaping global geopolitics in Africa.

READ ALSO: Afreximbank leads $1.35bn financing in $4bn Dangote Refinery deal