30.9.2029
Despite protests by the locals in Lamu County Kenya the Dangote Refinery performed the groundbreaking ceremony of its $16-billion crude oil processing plant in the East African country.
When construction is completed in the coastal town of Lamu in 40 months, the refinery is expected to process 700,000 barrels of oil per day.
Kenya’s President William Ruto and his counterparts from Uganda, Ethiopia, Togo, Benin and Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo led a ground breaking ceremony at the site, shoveling soil to show that work on the refinery has started.
Billionaire Aliko Dangote, whose company, Dangote Group, will handle the refinery’s construction and has stakes in the project, said Wednesday “Africa must industrialise Africa,” adding that the continent cannot be “exporting what it has and importing what it needs.”
The refinery will rely on oil from neighboring countries. However, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni said his country had planned to build its own “small refinery” and those plans would continue. The region needs “more than one or two refineries,” he said.
“For Ugandan crude, I didn’t want to export any crude, I wanted to refine it locally,” he said.
Dangote said East African countries have a sufficient market for the oil that will be refined locally. The countries in the region consume much more than the 700,000 barrels per day that will be refined, he said.
The refinery was initially planned to be built in Tanzania’s coastal town of Tanga, but Dangote said it was later determined that Lamu had deeper waters, solid ground capable of supporting the heavy equipment, and deep-sea access.
Other East African countries – Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, and Tanzania – sent heads of delegation to represent their heads of state at the ceremony.
Locals have claimed the the parcel of land the refinery will stand is ancestral land which they farmed and resided for centuries and they ought to be adequately compensated.
A Court will hear their arguments on October 12.
Environmental activists also say the project threatens the marine ecosystem at the coast. With AP reports.