Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote has announced plans to generate electricity at the Lamu refinery and sell part of the power to the Kenyan government once the refinery begins operating.

🇰🇪 Breaking It Down

Dangote on Friday, September 26, said the planned Lamu facility would have a 1,000-megawatt power plant, with half of the electricity potentially supplied to the Kenyan market.

“We are going to produce about 1,000 megawatts in Lamu and have 500 megawatts to sell to the Kenyan government,” Dangote said during President William Ruto’s visit to the Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lekki, Nigeria.

Dangote said electricity generation would be part of the refinery investment, which he described as an entry point for additional businesses and investments.

📌 What You Need to Know

“What this investment will do to Kenya’s economy is not only the refinery. The refinery is actually the gate. Once you open the refinery, you will be shocked at how many people will come to invest in Kenya,” he said.

The Lamu refinery is expected to process crude oil from the country's oilfields in Lokichar, Turkana County, while supplying refined petroleum products to markets across East and Central Africa.

The facility is projected to refine about 700,000 barrels of crude oil per day, making it a major component of Kenya’s plans to expand its petroleum refining capacity.

Dangote also indicated that the Lamu project would feature equipment that is not currently available at his Nigerian refinery, including a coker, while its Residual Fluid Catalytic Cracker (RFCC) would be larger.

Speaking during the visit, Ruto said his administration was backing the multi-trillion-shilling project and had already secured land for its development, paving the way for construction to begin.

“We are not looking at this as just a refinery. We are looking at it as a refinery that is also going to elevate our industrial scale. We have already secured the land for this project,” Ruto said.

📰 Source: Kenyans.co.ke