{"id":21872,"date":"2026-08-24T16:54:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T16:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/?p=21872"},"modified":"2026-08-24T16:54:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T16:54:44","slug":"refinery-rivalry-billion-dollar-oil-projects-expose-east-africas-long-running-regional-tensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/21872\/refinery-rivalry-billion-dollar-oil-projects-expose-east-africas-long-running-regional-tensions\/","title":{"rendered":"Refinery rivalry: billion\u2011dollar oil projects expose East Africa\u2019s long\u2011running regional tensions"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brendon J. Cannon<\/a>*<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

East Africa, a region that has been working to deepen economic integration for\u00a0more than 25 years<\/a>, has a history of disagreements about the location of energy infrastructure. Uganda\u00a0discovered<\/a>\u00a0oil in 2006 with the potential to pump an estimated 210,000 to 230,000 barrels of oil per day at peak production. Back in 2014, Kenya and Uganda\u00a0agreed on a joint crude oil pipeline<\/a>\u00a0from Uganda\u2019s oil fields at Lake Albert to the Indian Ocean. But the plan was shelved in 2016. Eventually, Uganda chose a southern route through Tanzania, forcing Kenya back to the drawing board.<\/em><\/p>\n

This year, Kenya\u2019s president William Ruto and Uganda\u2019s Yoweri Museveni\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0plans for a new\u00a0east African oil refinery<\/a>, reportedly in Tanzania by Nigeria\u2019s\u00a0Aliko Dangote<\/a>, Africa\u2019s richest person and the founder, president and chief executive of the Dangote Group. The refinery plans looked like a win for east African solidarity and sovereignty. However, days later, President Samia Hassan\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0she hadn\u2019t been consulted on the plans to build it in Tanzania.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Dangote refinery\u00a0has now been slated for Lamu<\/a>, Kenya\u2019s new port north of Mombasa. That should have closed the matter but it did not. Uganda and Tanzania have since signed a\u00a0memorandum of understanding<\/a>\u00a0with commodity trader Vitol Bahrain to build a US$20 billion regional energy hub in Tanga, Tanzania complete with petroleum storage, refining, logistics, trading and distribution facilities.<\/em><\/p>\n

Brendon J. Cannon<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Stephen Mogaka<\/a>\u00a0have written about east African politics, pipelines and security for over a decade. They shed light on these latest developments.<\/em><\/p>\n

You studied the regional energy rivalry in east Africa over a crude oil pipeline. How did it play out?<\/h2>\n

Uganda and Kenya\u00a0agreed in 2014<\/a>\u00a0to jointly build a pipeline from Uganda\u2019s oilfields to Kenya\u2019s planned port at Lamu.<\/p>\n

The deal\u00a0collapsed<\/a> within two years. Kenya\u2019s push for its northern route, inflated security concerns and land compensation issues all played a part.<\/p>\n

But the decisive factor was Total, the French oil major developing Uganda\u2019s fields. It lobbied for and helped finance an\u00a0alternative pipeline<\/a>\u00a0bypassing Kenya entirely to Tanzania\u2019s port of Tanga. Landlocked Uganda\u2019s\u00a0chronic unease<\/a>\u00a0about depending on Kenya did the rest.<\/p>\n

By 2016, the pipeline deal was dead. The Uganda-Tanzania route,\u00a0known as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline<\/a>, is becoming a reality, at reportedly 90%\u00a0complete<\/a>\u00a0as of August 2026. The first oil is expected in early 2027.<\/p>\n

The heated pipeline will carry Uganda\u2019s waxy crude oil from its Lake Albert oilfields to Tanga in Tanzania for export.<\/p>\n

What drives mistrust and competitive statecraft in the east African region?<\/h2>\n

Competitive statecraft in east Africa, particularly between Kenya and Tanzania, is old and deep. It is rooted in\u00a0divergent post-independence ideologies<\/a>, and in recent decades by\u00a0rival ambitions<\/a>\u00a0to be the region\u2019s main commercial gateway to international markets.<\/p>\n

Kenya\u2019s post-independence leaders were once\u00a0dismissed<\/a>\u00a0by Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere as running a \u201cman-eat-man\u201d society on account of Nairobi\u2019s capitalism. Kenyan attorney-general Charles Njonjo shot back, calling socialist Tanzania a \u201cman-eat-nothing<\/a>\u201d society.<\/p>\n

The legacy of mutual suspicion continues to cast a shadow despite some improvements in bilateral relations between Kenya and Tanzania.<\/p>\n

Kenya has\u00a0pushed<\/a>\u00a0for decades to fully develop its northern transport corridor. Tanzania has attempted to do the same for its central and southern routes. As early as 2016, journalists were already describing Kenya\u2019s\u00a0planned port at Lamu<\/a>\u00a0and Tanzania\u2019s answer at\u00a0Bagamoyo<\/a>\u00a0as rivals in the race to become\u00a0east Africa\u2019s most important port<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kenyan transport officials are still weighing upgrades to the northern corridor to fend off Tanzania\u2019s\u00a0expanding central corridor<\/a>\u00a0and its\u00a0new electric railway<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Each has\u00a0courted<\/a>\u00a0landlocked Uganda and Rwanda, and more recently Uganda\u2019s oil, as the prize that determines which corridor prevails. But the biggest prize of all would be a pipeline corridor to South Sudan and its oil, with proven reserves of of\u00a03.5 billion barrels,<\/a>\u00a0making it the third-largest holder of oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa and the primary major oil producer in east Africa.<\/p>\n

Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have been consulted on the Dangote-financed refinery. Does the Lamu decision mark a break from past rivalries?<\/h2>\n

The decision to build what is billed as\u00a0east Africa\u2019s only refinery<\/a>\u00a0in Lamu seems, at first, to be more of the same politics of intrigue.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s worth pointing out that the Tanga idea began as a joint regional concept: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and others\u00a0floated<\/a>\u00a0a Dangote-style refinery in early 2026.<\/p>\n

And Dangote offered to lead its construction if governments agreed on a site.<\/p>\n

Ruto\u2019s early embrace of Tanga was itself\u00a0widely misread<\/a>\u00a0in Kenya as him favouring Tanzania over his own country. It prompted uncomfortable questions about his motives before\u00a0Dangote\u2019s own commercial preference<\/a>\u00a0for the Kenyan coast settled the matter. His\u00a0public rebuke<\/a>\u00a0by Tanzania\u2019s president only added to the ill will.<\/p>\n

Reports<\/a>\u00a0on the deliberations indicate Dangote\u2019s team weighed Uganda\u2019s oilfields near Hoima, Mombasa and Tanga before settling on Lamu. This was on the strength of\u00a0ample land suitable for large-scale industrial development and a functioning deep-water port<\/a>. Kenya\u2019s more liquid banking sector was also capable of helping underwrite the\u00a0US$16-US$17 billion<\/a>\u00a0project.<\/p>\n

As with the east African pipeline saga in 2014, an external investor\u2019s commercial calculus, not regional consensus, decided the outcome.<\/p>\n

Dangote does not need east African solidarity. If one government proves difficult, he can build elsewhere, exactly as Total once did.<\/p>\n

Kenya, chastened by its clumsy pipeline diplomacy circa 2014, appears to have\u00a0lobbied<\/a>\u00a0more skilfully this time. It has reportedly\u00a0pledged<\/a>\u00a0seed capital totalling KSH 21.5 billion (approximately US$166 million) and invited its neighbours to take stakes.<\/p>\n

Yet within weeks, Uganda and Tanzania\u00a0answered<\/a>\u00a0with their own Tanga hub, framed around retaining more value from regional oil rather than exporting crude and importing refined fuel.<\/p>\n

Uganda, notably, keeps\u00a0hedging<\/a>: attempting to finance its own\u00a0Hoima refinery<\/a>\u00a0while backing both Lamu and Tanga.<\/p>\n

Rivalry has not disappeared from east Africa. It has simply been repackaged as parallel, competing \u201cregional\u201d projects.<\/p>\n

How strong is the case for a regional refinery?<\/h2>\n

The underlying economic logic for a refinery is strong.<\/p>\n

East Africa refines almost none of its own fuel despite an\u00a0estimated 4.7 billion barrels<\/a>\u00a0of reserves across Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Iran\u2019s threats and attacks against shipping in the Gulf this year underscored how\u00a0vulnerable the region is<\/a>\u00a0to Middle Eastern supply shocks.<\/p>\n

A Lamu refinery sits at the terminus of a\u00a0multi-country corridor<\/a>: the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport project. This is a multi-decade, multi-billion-dollar plan to link the deep-water port at Lamu with road, rail, pipeline and airport infrastructure reaching South Sudan and Ethiopia.<\/p>\n

It will also potentially carry South Sudan\u2019s abundant, higher-quality crude (still shipped mostly through Sudan), plus Kenya\u2019s own onshore reserves in Turkana and prospective offshore fields.<\/p>\n

Linking this to a refinery, rather than only a crude export pipeline, would give Lamu a\u00a0far more durable rationale<\/a>\u00a0than the aborted Uganda-Kenya pipeline ever had. Whether this happens depends less on engineering than on east Africa\u2019s politics and financing.<\/p>\n

\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640<\/p>\n

* Associate Professor, Khalifa University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

East Africa, a region that has been working to deepen economic integration for\u00a0more than 25 years, has a history of disagreements about the location of energy infrastructure. Uganda\u00a0discovered\u00a0oil in 2006 with the potential to pump an estimated 210,000 to 230,000 barrels of oil per day at peak production. Back in 2014, Kenya and Uganda\u00a0agreed on a joint crude oil pipeline\u00a0from Uganda\u2019s oil fields at Lake Albert to the Indian Ocean. But the plan was shelved in 2016. Eventually, Uganda chose a southern route through Tanzania, forcing Kenya back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"The Conversation","source_url":"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/refinery-rivalry-billion-dollar-oil-projects-expose-east-africas-long-running-regional-tensions-289820","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,36,2362],"tags":[2099,111,132],"class_list":["post-21872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-ana-economy","category-featured","tag-aliko-dangote","tag-kenya","tag-uganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21872"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21875,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21872\/revisions\/21875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}