Dangote Refinery Launches Africa's Biggest-Ever IPO, Aiming to Raise $1.63bn

Aliko Dangote's oil refinery has opened Africa's largest initial public offering to date, a listing that could raise more than $1.6bn and mark the first time a refinery has gone public on the Nigerian Exchange in its 66-year history.

The offer opened on Monday, September 14, days after Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission approved the sale. Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals is selling 4.1 billion new ordinary shares at N525 each, with a minimum subscription of 10 shares costing N5,250. The window closes on October 13. If fully subscribed, the offer would raise about 2.15 trillion naira, roughly $1.63bn, and the SEC's registration of the company's existing 120.13 billion shares implies a total valuation near $47bn.

Dangote sounded the closing gong at the Nigerian Exchange trading floor in Lagos to mark the offer's launch. He has framed the listing as a way to widen ownership of his companies rather than simply raise capital, saying he wants every person on the continent to be able to own a piece of the business. The company is targeting as many as 10 million shareholders from across Africa and beyond, and has marketed the offer heavily through banking apps and fintech platforms aimed at younger investors.

The refinery itself runs at a capacity of 650,000 to 700,000 barrels a day depending on the measure used, and the proceeds are earmarked in part to fund a planned expansion to 1.4 million barrels a day by 2029, alongside a $400m underwriting commitment already secured for the buildout. Built at a cost of about $20bn on the outskirts of Lagos, the plant has turned Nigeria into a net exporter of refined fuel for the first time in decades, with net exports running at roughly 44,000 barrels a day to regional markets, and has benefited this year from global supply disruptions tied to the war in Iran, exporting jet fuel across Africa and into Europe.

Dangote, Africa's richest person, has seen his personal fortune climb alongside the refinery's rise, reaching roughly $36.7bn according to Bloomberg's billionaires index, a figure that makes him both the richest African and the wealthiest Black person in the world. A successful listing would push that figure higher still, cementing a dominance he has built across cement, sugar and fertiliser as well as oil.

International participation in the offer is limited for now. Non-Nigerian investors need a Non-Resident BVN, a CSCS account and a SEC-registered Nigerian brokerage account to take part, and the refinery's chief executive, David Bird, has said a listing on an exchange like London remains roughly three years away, leaving the NGX offer as the only near-term entry point for most foreign investors.

Not everyone near the refinery's gates shares the enthusiasm building around the numbers. The plant sits in Lagos's Lekki free trade zone, where residents evicted to make way for construction say the schools, jobs and compensation promised in a 2007 memorandum never fully materialised, and where fishing communities report catches that have collapsed since work began in 2017. Health researchers have also raised concerns about elevated cancer risk for people living near the site as it approaches full capacity. Those tensions remain unresolved even as investors, from Lagos to the diaspora, weigh whether to buy in.