Aliko Dangote is about to become the Ambani of Africa

By Amit Jain

Photo credit: India Today/Bandeep Singh, Dangote Group

I knew I was on to something when I wrote this article Is Aliko Dangote emulating Ambani in trying to turn Nigeria’s oil curse into a blessing? for CNBC Africa back in 2022. Now, I am convinced he is. Aliko Dangote – the wealthiest African in the world was in Mumbai this month (Nov 2025) meeting and signing deals with the movers and sharkers of Indian business, banking and policy. The massive US$19bn^[1] Dangote integrated oil refinery that he has built near Lagos is an impressive industrial site and a shining example of what Africans can achieve if they put their heart and soul in it. Spanning 2300 football fields^[2] it has the capacity to process 650,000 barrels of crude per day. Now, Aliko Dangote wants to more than double its capacity. This will make it the largest refinery in the world, alongside the Jamnagar refinery set up by Indian billionaire-industrialist Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries back in 1999.

Nothing is too ambitious for Aliko Dangote. a visionary entrepreneur who wants to transform Nigeria into an economic powerhouse. By doubling down on his pet project at a time when the world is transitioning away from fossil fuels Aliko Dangote has taken a bold gamble - one that could end his country’s dependence on fuel imports for good. The West African state sits on 37 billion barrels of crude oil^[3] but extracts less than 2 million barrels per day.  Worse yet, it refines very little. The four^[4] state-run refineries are in a sorry state, and it costs more to import petrol and diesel than the revenue it gets from crude oil exports. This is turning out to be unsustainable. The country consumes approximately 33m litres of petrol daily and until recently every single drop was imported. All this started to change once the US$19bn^[5] Dangote integrated oil refinery became operational. I visited it in 2023. At the time it had still not started producing fuel. It is now said to be producing almost 20 million litres of fuel – far short of its planned capacity.^[6] In time, however, it could prove to be a ‘game changer’ for Nigeria just as the Jamnagar refinery has been for India.

Centre Director with Tolaram officials at the Dangote Oil Refinery.

Turning the Oil Curse into a Blessing

Aliko Dangote has styled himself on Mukesh Ambani, although unlike the Indian billionaire he does not flaunt his wealth and prefers to keep members of his family out of the media spotlight. The two men certainly have a lot in common. Both have made their fortunes in heavily regulated markets. Both have benefitted from protectionist industrial policies. They are both politically connected. And they both have a reputation of making bold investments. It is also a remarkable coincidence that they have both thrived in an environment of extreme inequality. After all they are billionaires in countries that are home to the largest pool of poor in the world. I had suspected the Dangote integrated oil refinery may have been inspired by Ambani’s 3035-hectare Reliance petrochemical industrial complex in Jamnagar.^[7] Now I have no doubt it was. Guess what is the processing capacity of the oil refinery in this complex? 1.4 million barrels of crude oil a day. That is exactly what Aliko Dangote wants his oil refinery to have in the next three years. Mukesh Ambani helped turn crude scarce India into one of the largest exporters of refined fuel in the world. Aliko Dangote wants to turn crude rich Nigeria into one of the largest exporters of refined fuel in the world. But the parallels do not end here.

Turning small savers into Investors

The Ambanis are credited to have converted thousands of middle-class Indians from conservative small-time savers into risk taking investors. Before their textile producing firm went public in 1977 the Indian stock market was the domain of an elite group of investors most of who hailed from the same Western Indian state of Gujarat where the family comes from. But Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh’s father and the founder of Reliance, managed to convince a large number of first-time small investors, to buy his company’s stocks. As the Reliance stock price rose so did the fortunes of thousands of small investors. Now, Aliko Dangote plans to list his refinery’s share on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX).^[8] And when he does thousands of Nigerians will line up to buy shares in the Dangote Group. Watch this space. Aliko Dangote is about the become the Ambani of Africa.

(The author is the Director of the NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies at the Nanyang Business School in Singapore. To re-publish this article contact [email protected])