Dangote Refinery: Share requests from 119 countries and all 54 African states

The public offering for the Dangote refinery, Africa's largest refining unit, closed on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, in Lagos, without further extension, after attracting share requests from 119 countries. According to the business media outlet Billionaires.Africa, investors from all 54 countries on the continent requested an allocation of shares: ten days earlier, the group counted just over 90, including 51 African nations.

The company is selling 4.1 billion new shares at 525 naira each, totaling approximately 2.15 trillion naira, or nearly 1.6 billion dollars. An option allows for the offer to be expanded by 30% if demand justifies it, which would bring the total to over 2.1 billion dollars. The refinery is valued at nearly 50 billion dollars, and Aliko Dangote holds 87.27% of it.

African savings mobilized in small amounts

The operation was designed to bring in small-scale investors. The minimum ticket in Nigeria is ten shares, or 5,250 naira, which is less than four dollars. In the event of oversubscription, priority is to be given to requests equal to or less than 50,000 naira, or about 37 dollars. The group says it is aiming for up to ten million shareholders.

Outside of Nigeria, access is provided through depositary receipts sold on the Nairobi and Botswana stock exchanges, with Gaborone serving as the sole hub for Southern Africa, where the group hopes to raise 500 million dollars.

The schedule for the coming weeks

The records from the placing banks must be consolidated by November 3, 2026. The share allocation basis will be submitted to the Nigerian regulator, the SEC, on November 10, with approval expected around November 17. The listing on the Lagos Stock Exchange is announced for December.

What the money is intended to fund

The plant processes approximately 700,000 barrels of crude oil per day near Lagos. For the first nine months of 2026, it reported 22.5 billion dollars in revenue, an increase of 144%, and 4.73 billion dollars in net profit. The funds raised are intended to help increase capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2029.

The stakes go beyond a simple stock market launch. For decades, Nigeria, the continent's leading crude producer, has exported its oil only to buy back refined fuels from elsewhere. A factory 87% owned by a single man does not solve this dependency on its own, and the actual distribution of shares will show whether small savers have obtained the place they were promised. However, the fact that requests came from all 54 countries on the continent speaks volumes about the appetite of Africans to finance African industry themselves.