Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person, has hired an Indian firm to oversee the construction of his next big project, a $16 billion refinery in Kenya.Engineers India Ltd (EIL), with a majority stake owned by the state, has signed a $450 million deal with Dangote to oversee the construction of the 700,000-barrels-per-day greenfield refinery and petrochemical plant in Lamu, a coastal town in Kenya. EIL was also involved in building Dangote’s Lagos refinery.EIL was the consultant for Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals Fze in Lagos and is also overseeing its ongoing expansion. The company operates under the ministry of petroleum and natural gas of the government of India.The new Kenya project will add to Dangote’s refinery business, which already includes his Lagos facility. The Lagos refinery’s capacity is planned to double to 1.4 million barrels a day by 2029, Bloomberg reported.The Kenya plant will expand Dangote’s presence from the Atlantic coast to the Indian Ocean and into the global energy market.“Once completed, this project will be critical in strengthening fuel production within East Africa, reducing reliance on imports, and supporting regional energy security,” Engineers India, or EIL, said in a filing on the Mumbai stock exchange.Dangote said this month that work on the refinery will start by the end of September. The project will cost $16 billion to complete and will have a planned capacity of 700,000 barrels of crude per day.Dangote also plans to build pipelines as part of the project. One pipeline will connect Lamu to Ethiopia, while another will link Djibouti to Ethiopia.These plans are part of a larger proposal to build a 4,000-kilometre pipeline network connecting landlocked countries in the region.The Kenya refinery is part of Dangote’s wider plans to expand his business across Africa.Dangote currently has a net worth of $35.5 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He plans to spend as much as $50 billion over the next four years to expand his business empire across the continent.The expansion comes after Dangote set a target of $100 billion in revenues for the Dangote Group by 2030.
