Translated with AI assistance
A new terminal in Namibia and future pipelines are set to connect the continent’s largest refinery with the markets of southern Africa.
The Aliko Dangote Group, owned by Africa’s wealthiest entrepreneur, has begun construction of a $2.5 billion fuel terminal and pipeline system in Walvis Bay, Namibia. The project aims to address one of the key challenges in African oil refining: producing fuel is not enough — it must also be delivered to buyers cheaply and reliably.
The terminal will be able to store approximately 600 million liters of fuel, or 4 million barrels – eight times more than Namibia’s existing state storage facility. Construction is planned to be completed within 18–20 months.
The next stage involves approximately 1,700 km of pipelines designed to connect the port with inland markets in southern Africa. Among the possible destinations, Reuters mentions Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and, in the future, the Democratic Republic of the Congo; the final routes have yet to be agreed upon.
Walvis Bay is particularly well suited for this: the port is already connected by transport corridors to South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and the copper belt of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The project complements Dangote’s other flagship asset — Africa’s largest oil refinery in Nigeria, with a capacity of approximately 700,000 barrels per day. While the primary objective previously was to build domestic refining capacity on the continent, Dangote is now creating the next level of the value chain — storage, logistics, and direct access to end markets.
This is the main point of the Namibian project: Dangote is building what African oil refining has long lacked—not only a large refinery, but also its own infrastructure capable of delivering fuel produced in Africa across half the continent directly to the buyer.
