{"id":865835,"date":"2026-09-30T12:14:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T12:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/865835\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T12:14:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T12:14:20","slug":"african-heads-of-state-break-ground-for-16b-oil-refinery-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/865835\/","title":{"rendered":"African heads of state break ground for $16B oil refinery project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">NAIROBI, Kenya &#8212; Five African heads of state led a ground breaking ceremony Wednesday on a <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/kenya-dangote-lamu-refinery-a349155eae5beb15ab17813ae835ba83\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">$16-billion oil refinery<\/a> project in East Africa, following calls for the continent to boost its self-sufficiency in processing raw materials into finished products. <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Kenya\u2019s President William Ruto hosted his counterparts from Uganda, Ethiopia, Togo, Benin as well as Nigeria&#8217;s former President Olusegun Obasanjo, shoveling soil at the site to symbolically show construction of the refinery has started.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">When work is completed in 40 months, the refinery is expected to process 700,000 barrels of oil per day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The project, in the coastal town of Lamu, will be undertaken by Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, who insisted that \u201cAfrica must industrialize Africa.&#8221; He said Wednesday the continent cannot be \u201cexporting what it has and importing what it needs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The refinery will rely on oil from neighboring countries such as Uganda, which plans to export oil through Tanzania, and South Sudan, which exports oil via Sudan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Dangote said East African countries have a sufficient market for the oil that will be refined locally. The countries in the region consume much more than the 700,000 barrels per day that will be refined, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The refinery was initially planned to be built in Tanzania\u2019s coastal town of Tanga, but Dangote said it was later determined that Lamu had deeper waters, solid ground capable of supporting the heavy equipment, and deep-sea access.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">Other East African countries \u2013 Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, and Tanzania \u2013 sent heads of delegation to represent their heads of state at the ceremony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NAIROBI, Kenya &#8212; Five African heads of state led a ground breaking ceremony Wednesday on a $16-billion oil&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,28,3321,793,451,3,139727,3936,452,453,965],"class_list":["post-865835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-business","tag-energy-industry","tag-general-news","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-production-facilities","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}