Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, says his company has acquired a 25 per cent stake in Kenya Pipeline Company in a deal valued at approximately $327 million.
Dangote announced the acquisition on Wednesday at the Financial Times Africa Summit in London, according to Reuters, saying the investment would facilitate the distribution of petroleum products.
“We bought 25 per cent of their pipeline network for the distribution of petroleum products,” the president of Dangote Industries Limited said.
The acquisition comes as Dangote expands his investments in Africa’s energy sector, including a proposed $16 billion refinery in Kenya designed to process 700,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
On September 30, Dangote and Kenyan President William Ruto broke ground on the proposed refinery at Lamu Port.
Dangote said the project would be commissioned within 40 months, adding that it would have a processing capacity comparable to his Nigerian refinery.
“We will come back here and commission this refinery in 40 months from today. The East African refinery is designed to process approximately 700,000 barrels of crude per day. It will also generate 1,000 megawatts, twice that of Lagos,” he said.
He added that the facility would produce one million tonnes of polypropylene and base oil, as well as supply at least 20 per cent of the jet fuel consumed in Europe and the United Kingdom.
The pipeline acquisition follows Ruto’s announcement on Tuesday that private investors had acquired a 25 per cent stake in Kenya’s pipeline network from public entities. The Kenyan president did not identify the investors at the time.
Earlier this year, Kenya sold a 65 per cent stake in Kenya Pipeline Company through an initial public offering, in a major privatisation move aimed at raising government revenue amid limited fiscal space.
The transaction marked the country’s first major share sale in two decades.
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