Aliko Dangote, industrialist and president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Dangote Group, while joining Kenya’s President William Ruto to break the ground for his East African refinery at Lamu, Kenya, has set a 40-month timeline for the completion of the refinery.
President William Ruto who attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of a 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) East African oil refinery, outlining the next steps to be taken for the $17 billion refinery, said, breaking the ground was just the beginning, as more serious work lay ahead to make the project successful.
Dangote announced that a vessel with about 400 pieces of construction equipment was expected to dock at Lamu Port in the next 60 days. This is in addition to 110 pieces of equipment delivered last week.
The billionaire owner of the incoming refinery announced that his company would set up an engineering training school in Lamu in a bid to boost human capital and ensure there is maximum employment of Kenyans both during the construction and operation of the refinery.
“We want to make sure that we can get expertise locally without having to employ people from China and India,” Dangote said.
For President Ruto, he said the real work lies ahead in structuring, financing, building infrastructure, training the workforce, delivering on time, sourcing crude oil, and securing the market.
He urged Dangote to ensure to deliver the facility on the stated time, telling the Nigerian investor that Kenyans will be counting down the days, and would remind him (Dangote) if the project was incomplete by then.
“How we build this project matters as much as what we build. This is a government-enabled, private sector driven project, President Ruto said.
He assured, “government provides policy certainty, coordination, infrastructure and regulation, the conditions that make investments possible. Private enterprise mobilises capital, technical expertise, and carries the obligations of management”.
President Ruto informed that the Kenyan government intends to invest in the refinery project through the Kenyan National Infrastructure Fund, which was established to mobilise assets, savings and capital markets and crowd in long-term local and foreign investment.
He called on Kenyans to prepare to invest in the refinery when its initial public offering (IPO) is made later, describing the investment an opportunity in a lifetime.
Meanwhile, Dangote and the Kenyan government have signed an agreement over land matters, in which the parties agreed that such issues would be handled lawfully and fairly; while environmental and social impacts will be assessed rigorously.
“The safeguards we agreed on will be enforced during construction and during operation,” Ruto said.
A section of the Lamu county had raised concerns about they being kept in the dark over the refinery project, especially as it concern employment, environmental and social impacts on their ancestral lands. Part of moves to assure the Lamu locals is a plan to construct a pipeline that would pump water from River Tana to Lamu, which will be used in the refinery, as well as by communities in the refinery project’s vicinity.
President Ruto then called on technical and vocational institutions and universities in Kenya to prepare the welders, technicians, engineers, and managers with skills needed for the refinery project to succeed.
He called on the youth in Lamu and across Kenya to get a fair chance to learn skills and compete fairly for jobs.
