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African governments from Johannesburg to Nairobi are in urgent contact with the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals outside Lagos, seeking emergency supply contracts as the U.S.-Israel war against Iran chokes off the Middle Eastern fuel flows that most of the continent has depended on for decades — a structural vulnerability that the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz has exposed with sudden and potentially destabilizing force.
Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals has been approached by South Africa and other governments in the region, as well as from countries outside the continent, a company executive confirmed in a statement.
South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, and several other African countries have indicated their interest in becoming customers of the 650,000-barrel-per-day Lagos facility. South Africa is seeking a standard 12-month supply contract with Nigeria, according to people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be named because the talks remain private.
The urgency underlying the outreach reflects both the scale of the disruption and the depth of Africa’s pre-existing supply vulnerability.
About 600,000 barrels a day of oil products that typically flow to the continent from the Middle East are at risk, with tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz slowing to a trickle, according to the International Energy Agency. East and southern Africa receive approximately 75 percent of their refined fuel imports from the Middle East — a dependence that had been building for years as domestic refining capacity across the continent contracted.
Africa, which accounts for about seven percent of global crude output, saw its refining capacity shrink by approximately one-third over the two decades preceding the Dangote refinery’s commissioning — a contraction driven by plant closures, chronic underinvestment, and the inability of aging facilities to meet tightening fuel quality standards.
The result was a continent that produces significant volumes of oil but increasingly imports the refined products its consumers need, at prices and on logistics chains ultimately dependent on uninterrupted access to Persian Gulf infrastructure.
The Dangote refinery’s emergence as an alternative supply node is, in one sense, a demonstration of what the $20 billion facility was always intended to deliver. The plant, which began operations in 2024 after years of delays and substantial cost overruns, has been ramping up toward full capacity since then and has already eliminated the chronic fuel scarcity that characterized Nigeria’s downstream sector for years, ensuring consistent domestic availability of petrol, diesel, and aviation fuel.
But the facility was not designed or positioned to substitute for the continent-wide volumes now suddenly at risk. About 75 percent of Dangote’s output is reserved for Nigeria’s domestic market — a country that consumes approximately 493,000 barrels of fuel per day — leaving only a limited exportable surplus available to address the region-wide deficit now materializing.
Aliko Dangote, chairman of the Dangote Group and Africa’s richest individual, made clear in a recent interview with The Economist that the competitive logic of the current environment has been fundamentally altered.
“Right now it is not about pricing, it’s about availability,” he said. “I think the situation will continue for a while.” That shift from price competition to supply security as the primary procurement criterion — across the continent and globally — is what has driven governments that previously sourced fuel from the cheapest available supplier to call Lagos.
The country-by-country picture across Africa is one of varying immediacy. South Africa’s situation is particularly exposed as a structural matter. The country has lost approximately half its domestic refining capacity in recent years after accidents and prolonged underinvestment left plants unable to meet cleaner fuel standards — a deterioration that was already increasing its dependence on imports before the war began.
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Saudi Arabia was South Africa’s second-largest oil supplier in 2024. Jacob Mbele, director-general at South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources, said the government was “looking everywhere” for supply options.
“We’re comfortable that in the coming weeks or so, we are safe,” he said, adding that “the situation is fluid, it changes every day.” The South African government’s formal public statement said it was “actively coordinating with industry stakeholders to secure both crude oil and refined petroleum products from a diversified range of sources” and that “a comprehensive plan is in place to manage potential supply risks.”
South African coal miner Exxaro has separately moved to ensure independent fuel supply arrangements for its vehicles and mining operations, reflecting corporate-level concern about continuity of supply that extends beyond government procurement.
Kenya’s situation is structurally acute. The country consumes approximately 100,000 barrels of fuel per day and imports all of it, with a dormant refinery at the port city of Mombasa that was shuttered years ago as unprofitable. Importers are legally required to maintain 21 days of operational stock — a buffer that leaves the country vulnerable if a single expected cargo fails to arrive. Kenya renewed a supply contract last year with Saudi Aramco, Emirates National Oil Co., and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., which are now among the disrupted sources. Officials had not responded to questions about the status of incoming cargo and the timeline for potential supply depletion as of publication.
Read Also: Nigerian Filling Stations Reduce Fuel Price After Dangote Cut
Ethiopia has moved to a formal rationing posture, urging citizens to conserve fuel and directing priority access to public transportation operators. Ghana, by contrast, holds approximately two months of fuel stocks — a meaningful buffer that its energy minister has cited as justification for public confidence. Ghana’s Sentuo Oil Refinery operates with capacity of approximately 40,000 barrels per day, and output at the Tema refinery is expected to increase following maintenance work completing in May.
Elitsa Georgieva, executive director of the energy consultancy CITAC, described the strain as most acute across east and southern Africa. She also flagged a dimension of the crisis that stands to systematically disadvantage poorer nations: as wealthier buyers with stronger balance sheets and sovereign credit offer higher prices to secure supply, developing economies will find themselves outbid in a market where availability has overtaken price as the determining factor.
The Dangote refinery is seeking to expand its own crude supply to increase its export margin. The facility has previously supplemented its crude sourcing with imports from the United States, and Dangote is now actively seeking to secure additional volumes from domestic Nigerian producers to reduce that external dependence and maximize the plant’s operational output during a period of exceptional regional demand.
The broader structural lesson implicit in the present scramble — that a continent producing significant volumes of oil had allowed its refining capacity to atrophy to the point of near-total import dependence for refined products — has been documented in energy sector reports for years. The Iran war’s disruption of Middle Eastern supply chains has imposed an immediate and painful cost on that long-standing policy failure.
Bloomberg noted that the jockeying for Dangote’s export volumes is expected to substantially boost the refinery’s profitability — a financial benefit for its owner that comes directly at the expense of the African governments now competing to secure what limited export capacity is available.
No formal supply contracts between the Dangote refinery and any of the named African governments had been publicly confirmed as of Friday. Discussions were described by all parties as ongoing.
