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Aliko Dangote has revealed that the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals is targeting as many as 10 million shareholders across Africa and beyond through its planned Initial Public Offering, IPO.
Dangote made this known on Monday after the formal signing ceremony for the refinery’s IPO at the Eko Convention Centre in Lagos. According to the billionaire businessman, the offering is not primarily about raising fresh money but about giving ordinary Africans an opportunity to own a stake in one of the continent’s biggest industrial projects.
“It’s not really about raising money. It’s about getting our own Africans generally to be part and parcel of this,” Dangote said.
He explained that the company is already generating strong cash flow and has previously raised substantial funds through bonds and private placements. For that reason, he said, widening ownership is more important than securing additional capital.
Dangote noted that investors would be able to subscribe for as little as 10 shares, a move he said was designed to make the investment accessible to a much wider pool of people, including salary earners.
“If we want to raise money, we know how to raise,” he said, adding that the company could have offered a much larger stake if fundraising had been the main objective. According to him, the company could have offered up to 20 per cent of the refinery, but deliberately chose to keep the offer limited to encourage broader participation.
‘We Want Africans to Own Part of It’
Dangote said his ambition is to build companies that ordinary Africans can own and benefit from over the long term, rather than having ownership concentrated in the hands of a few investors.
“We are creating big corporations where we don’t want to be the only people enjoying. We want to spread this enjoyment to the rest of Africa,” he said.
He compared his vision to globally recognised companies such as Amazon and Coca-Cola, where early and long-term investors have seen the value of their holdings grow substantially over time.
Dangote also pointed to the group’s fertiliser business and other investments, saying the refinery is part of a broader effort to establish large African-owned corporations capable of creating wealth for generations.
Refinery’s Profitability Not Based on Global Crises
On the refinery’s financial outlook, Dangote said its projections were based on normal market conditions rather than unusually high refining margins caused by international crises.
He said the company had deliberately avoided using events such as the Russia-Ukraine war and the Middle East crisis as the basis for its financial calculations.
“Our own basis of calculation is based on the normal days,” he said.
According to him, relying on temporary gains from geopolitical instability would not provide a realistic foundation for a business expected to operate for decades.
“You cannot base your business based on that. We don’t base our business based on crisis. No, we base the businesses based on the normal trend,” he added.
Strong Investor InterestDangote also confirmed that there has been significant interest from strategic investors, although he declined to disclose their identities because of existing non-disclosure agreements.
He recalled that a previous private placement attracted demand far beyond what the company initially planned to raise. The company had sought $1 billion but received demand worth about $3.7 billion.
“We wanted to sell only $1 billion worth of shares to our private investors, and we got 3.7 times the demand,” he said.
Dangote said the company eventually accepted $2.5 billion and returned the remaining $1.2 billion to investors.For him, the refinery is not a short-term project but a generational investment.
“This is a lifetime investment. This refinery is not about 10 years, 20, 30, or 50 years,” he said.
The planned IPO follows regulatory approval and the signing of transaction documents by the refinery and its financial advisers, setting the stage for wider public participation in the ownership of the massive petroleum refining project.
