Tanzania’s president confronts Ruto over being blindsided by refinery plans in her country

Since becoming public knowledge, plans to set up an oil refinery in the East African region have been met with applause.

• Plans for a major oil refinery in Tanzania have been announced by Kenya’s president and Aliko Dangote, without consultation with Tanzania’s president.
• Tanzania's president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, publicly expressed concern about not being informed or invited to discussions on the refinery project.
• The planned refinery is currently set to be built in Tanga, Tanzania, connecting to Kenya’s Mombasa via pipeline, and aims to process oil from regional sources.
• Dangote pledged to complete the refinery in four to five years, suggesting it could be as advanced as his Lagos facility in Nigeria.

However, a key player in the initiative’s blueprint has come out to critique how the whole thing has been handled so far, noting that there has been no consultation from its part.

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Tanzania’s president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, recently relayed that she wasn’t consulted over plans to establish a refinery in the country she heads.

The plan to build the refinery in Tanzania was announced last week by those intended to be the facility's primary stakeholders, including Kenya’s president, William Ruto, and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, who currently controls Africa’s largest single-train refinery.

The plan was disclosed after a meeting between Dangote and East African leaders, including Kenyan President William Ruto and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni.

It appears that the President of Tanzania was not extended an invitation to attend the aforementioned proceedings, as seen on Bloomberg.

“In my private discussions with Ruto, I pressed him: ‘Why did you announce a refinery in Tanga, and I know nothing about it?’” The Tanzanian president said in Dar es Salaam during Ruto’s visit to the country on Monday.

During the formal address to government representatives, President Ruto maintained that the Tanzanian public would derive significant benefits from hosting the refinery, and he subsequently urged his counterpart to support the implementation of the proposed investment.

Dangote's plan to aid in building an East African oil refinery

Nigeria’s top billionaire, Aliko Dangote, in April, pledged to bolster the construction of a new oil refinery in Tanzania.

According to William Ruto, the proposed refinery will be situated in the port city of Tanga in Tanzania and connect to Kenya, in Mombasa specifically, via a pipeline.

The facility is designed to process oil from regional sources, such as South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, establishing it as a shared infrastructure project for East Africa.

Dangote pledged to be done with the refinery in four to five years and stated that his group will take the lead in delivering it.

Additionally, he said that the project might be able to match the size and design of his flagship refinery in Lagos, which has assisted Nigeria in achieving fuel self-sufficiency and recently reached full capacity.

This project, now more than ever, is relevant given the conflict in the Middle East, which has disrupted energy supply channels, leading to economic shocks across the globe.