Second Legal Blow Lands on Dangote’s $16 Billion Kenya Refinery Project

A Kenyan consumer-rights lobby has launched a fresh legal challenge against Aliko Dangote’s planned oil refinery in the coastal city of Lamu, piling a second major obstacle onto the African billionaire’s $16 billion ambition.

In papers lodged with the Public Private Partnerships Petition Committee, the Consumers Federation of Kenya argues that the 700,000 barrel-a-day project is unconstitutional because it sidesteps the country’s public-private partnership law, Bloomberg reported.

At the heart of the complaint is Kenya’s intention to take an equity stake in the refinery. According to the federation, such a move “requires disclosure of the acquisition vehicle, subscription terms, valuation, funding source, payment schedule and rights attached to the stake” — none of which, it says, has been made public.

“The absence of those particulars prevents assessment of whether project risks have been transferred to the private party or retained by consumers and taxpayers without adequate protection,” the group said.

The lobby is asking the tribunal to suspend existing approvals for the plant and to compel authorities to determine whether the venture delivers genuine “value for money.”

The petition follows a separate case filed last week by 133 petitioners over a land-compensation dispute, in which a judge ordered construction frozen until the matter is settled.

Dangote, for his part, appears unmoved. Speaking at the project’s groundbreaking ceremony earlier this week, he dismissed the challenges bluntly: “Anybody who wants to cause trouble, we are ready for his trouble and we’ll give him headache.”

The refinery is designed to break eastern Africa’s total dependence on imported refined fuel, most of it shipped from the Middle East.

It also forms a cornerstone of Lapsset — the Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport corridor — a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure network encompassing railways, pipelines, a power plant, roads and airports.