Dangote Refinery to undertake ground breaking ceremony of its $17bn Kenyan refinery Friday

Dangote Refinery is to undertake the ground breaking ceremony of its proposed $17 billion refinery in Kenya on Friday Sept. 30, 2026. William Ruto, the Kenyan President, disclosed this in Lagos during a visit to the Dangote Refinery complex in Lagos at the weekend.

Meanwhile, Professor PLO Lumumba has strongly criticized the state of African and Kenyan higher education, citing the decision to bring in professional engineers from India to work on the upcoming Dangote refinery in Lamu, Kenya.

During a media interview on September 28, 2026, Lumumba lamented the fact that major local industrial projects still heavily rely on foreign technical expertise. His core arguments regarding the matter include; decline in educational quality. 

He said that African universities have deteriorated over the years, changing from elite hubs of innovation into mere “certificate- and degree-conferring institutions” that produce graduates who lack critical, practical skills.

He pointed out that while massive machinery and investments are landing on the continent, mega-projects continue to pass over local professionals in favor of engineers from India and China.

Lumumba argued that a societal obsession with politics has undermined professional sectors, as bad political environments force or incentivize talented minds to abandon their fields to become politicians rather than focusing on engineering and development.

Ultimately, Lumumba highlighted the engagement of Indian engineers as a wake-up call, urging African institutions to urgently reform their education models to prioritize genuine innovation and technical capacity.

The proposed Kenyan refinery is have an installed capacity to process 700,000 barrels per day, far bigger than the installed capacity of the Lagos plant.

Kenyan President said the proposed refinery would be a regional project as it would have the potential to boost industrial activities in East Africa, create employment opportunities and improve the technical skills.

He said his government was fast-tracking the administrative procedure for the take-off of the project with the land already secured for the project by the government.

The Kenya president said his government was also working on other requirements to eliminate bureaucratic bottlenecks and ensure that construction and subsequent operations would not be delayed.

“I just want to tell the Dangote family here that the government of Kenya is one hundred per cent behind your project, our project. We have already secured the land that is necessary for this.

“We are working on all the other enablers to make sure that we don’t spend time on doing administrative bureaucratic stuff so that at the earliest opportunity we can refine products out of Lamu in Kenya,” he said.

In his response, Aliko Dangote, the President of Dangote Group, said the refinery in Kenya would have a million-tonne polypropylene plant like the Lagos plant to support the development of downstream industries.

He said the project would also have additional processing facilities that are not available at the Lagos refinery to reflect the differences in the crude oil and product requirements of the two facilities.

“We will have some of the equipment that we have here, maybe like the RFCC, will be much heavier. And then you also have the coker, which we don’t have here, because of the type of crude that we have.

“And we also have VDU, which we also don’t have here. So, this will give you a sense of an idea of what we are going to have in Kenya. But Kenya will be a little bit bigger than what you are going to see,” Dangote said