At the Africa We Build Summit, organised by Africa Finance Corporation, Kenyan President William Ruto stated that he is discussing with Mr Aliko Dangote a joint plan to build an oil refinery at Tanzania’s port of Tanga. The plan also contemplates a refined-product pipeline infrastructure from Tanga to Mombasa, with onward movement to Uganda through the Eldoret-Kampala pipeline being jointly developed by Kenya and Uganda.
Africa’s richest man, Mr Dangote, who also attended the conference, reportedly said he could replicate his 650,000-barrel-per-day Nigerian refinery in East Africa, provided governments in the region supported the initiative. This may mark a critical turning point in the way Africa is beginning to think about natural resources.
Africa must stop treating value-addition as a narrow national project. The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop) already places Tanga at the centre of the emerging petroleum logistics system. A refinery at or around that coastal hub would sit where crude supply, export logistics, refined-product distribution and regional market access can be integrated efficiently.
A purely national refinery, even where technically sound, can struggle with crude supply risk, logistics cost inefficiencies and refined-products market risk. A regional refinery, properly structured, addresses those risks by aggregating crude supply, rationalising infrastructure and expanding the product market across borders.
I appreciated this during the negotiations for the RT Global Consortium, which had been selected as the preferred bidder to develop Uganda’s 60,000 barrels-per-day refinery. Those negotiations ultimately collapsed, largely because the core risks around crude supply, logistics and refined-product markets could not be satisfactorily resolved within a purely national refinery structure.
Later, when the Eacop Project was conceived, it became clear to me that Tanga was emerging not only as an export outlet, but as the natural coastal hub around which a regional refinery could be structured. The significance goes beyond joint development of petroleum resources. The same structural problem exists in minerals.
Tin, tungsten, iron, phosphates, graphite, rare earth elements, and other strategic minerals across East Africa cannot be optimally developed through isolated national projects alone. Mineral processing plants, smelters, refineries and mineral-based manufacturing hubs require scale, reliable feedstock, power, transport, water, skills and market access.
Those conditions do not always sit neatly within the borders of the country where the resource is first extracted. This is where the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community becomes important. It commits Partner States to cooperate in the joint exploration and exploitation of natural resources.
A regional refinery at Tanga would, therefore, be more than a commercial project. It would be a practical expression of the Treaty’s integration logic. Africa’s resource endowment is vast, but value-addition remains limited because projects are still too often conceived within national silos.
Africa’s natural-resource strategy cannot be realised within national borders alone. It must evolve towards regional, and eventually continental, projects that align resources, infrastructure and markets. The refinery at Tanga, if delivered, should be seen not as the exception, but as the model.