Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), led by Aliko Dangote, has acquired a 25 per cent stake in Kenya Pipeline Company to support the distribution of petroleum products.
Dangote announced the acquisition on Wednesday at the Financial Times Africa Summit in London, according to Reuters.
“We bought 25 per cent of their pipeline network for the distribution of petroleum products,” the industrialist said.
Bloomberg valued the transaction at approximately $327 million.
The deal comes as the Nigerian billionaire expands his energy investments across Africa, including plans to establish a refinery with a capacity of 700,000 barrels per day at Kenya’s Lamu port.
On September 30, Dangote launched the refinery project in Lamu alongside Kenyan President William Ruto. The proposed facility is estimated to cost $16 billion.
Dangote said the refinery, designed along the lines of his Nigerian facility, would be completed within 40 months.
“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.
“We have 1 million tons of polypropylene and we also have a base oil production that we’ll supply and also we will supply at least 20 percent of jet fuel consumed by Europe and the UK, like what we did during this crisis.”
On Tuesday, Ruto said private investors had purchased a 25 per cent stake in Kenya’s pipeline network from public entities, but did not disclose their identities.
Earlier this year, the Kenyan government sold a 65 per cent stake in Kenya Pipeline Company through an initial public offering (IPO), marking its first major share sale in two decades.
The sale formed part of the government’s efforts to generate revenue amid limited fiscal space.