ROTIMI ASHER
Africa’s biggest oil-refining bet is heading for the stock market with an ambitious $1.5 billion fundraising target that could make Dangote Refinery’s listing the largest share sale ever recorded on the continent.
The Dangote Group plans to offer about 4.1 billion shares in its refinery unit at 525 naira each, potentially raising around $1.5 billion, according to sources familiar with the deal.
The offer is expected to open on September 14, setting the stage for a major test of investor confidence in the $20 billion industrial giant that has already reshaped Nigeria’s fuel market.
Built on the outskirts of Lagos with a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, the Dangote refinery has rapidly emerged as one of Africa’s most strategically important energy assets. It has moved beyond supplying Nigeria, exporting refined products—including aviation fuel—to markets across Africa and Europe.
Now, Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is asking investors to buy into the next phase of the project.
The refinery is seeking fresh capital partly to finance an extraordinary expansion that could double its capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day, potentially transforming it into one of the world’s largest refining complexes.
The IPO already has a $400 million underwriting commitment, while a formal signing ceremony with the stock exchange is expected next week.
Demand could even push the deal beyond its initial target. The offering is expected to include a greenshoe option allowing roughly 15% additional shares to be sold if investors scramble for more.
But the blockbuster valuation attached to the refinery is likely to attract intense scrutiny.
A private placement in July pointed to a valuation of about $40 billion—far above the market value of some major international refining companies with comparable capacity.
That means investors are not merely being asked to buy shares in a refinery. They are being asked to bet heavily on Dangote’s vision of building an African industrial powerhouse.
Dangote has declared that ambition openly, saying he wants the refinery to become one of Africa’s largest companies and eventually generate more than $12 billion in annual EBITDA.
And he wants ordinary Africans to have a stake in the story.
“This is not a Nigerian listing. It’s an African listing,” Dangote said at a business meeting in Botswana, signalling his intention to attract investors from across the continent, including Nigerian retail investors.
For Nigeria, the IPO could mark another dramatic chapter in the Dangote refinery story: a massive private industrial gamble now seeking to tap the public markets for the money to become even bigger.
The question now is whether investors will buy into Dangote’s billion-dollar vision at the price he is asking.
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