Aliko Dangote has opened a new chapter for his industrial empire with a sweeping plan to list a 10 percent stake in his $20 billion refinery on the Nigerian Exchange in 2026, a move that could reshape Nigeria’s capital market and pull in global investors hungry for hard-currency returns.
He affirmed the plan at the unveiling of the Dangote Vision 2030 roadmap in Lagos, where he laid out a long-term strategy built around massive revenue growth, aggressive expansion in petrochemicals, and a bold shift toward dollar-denominated dividends for shareholders. His message throughout the evening carried the tone of a man positioning his companies for far larger international visibility.
During the presentation, Dangote said his team is already deep in talks with regulators at both the Nigerian Exchange and the Securities and Exchange Commission to finalize the structure of next year’s public offering. He noted that the initiative also includes ongoing engagement with the Ministry of Finance to secure the necessary approvals for the proposed payout framework.
“You buy in naira, but you get dividends in dollars,” he said, adding that the final go-ahead for this framework would come from the Finance Minister.
The dollar-dividend plan is anchored on the refinery’s growing export capacity. Dangote explained that shareholders across Dangote Cement, the refinery, and the fertilizer business would benefit from returns funded by roughly $6.4 billion in annual export earnings. The bulk of that money is expected to come from sales of polypropylene, fertilizer, and other petrochemical products, which will supply the consistent foreign-exchange inflows needed for payouts in US currency.
Analysts say this could mark a major turning point for the Nigerian market, providing a rare instrument that offers hard-currency income at a time when the local currency has struggled.
The refinery listing also aligns with a broader expansion drive that will define the next phase of the conglomerate’s trajectory. Dangote is targeting revenue of about $100 billion by 2030, a leap from the current $18 billion. The ambition is matched by an equally aggressive pursuit of scale, including a plan to push group-wide market capitalization beyond $200 billion before the end of the decade. Within that horizon, Dangote hopes to place his group among the world’s top 100 companies by value.
For the refinery itself, the numbers continue to climb. The 650,000-barrel-per-day plant is already turning out diesel, aviation fuel, and petrol, and Dangote disclosed that capacity will rise to 1.4 million barrels per day within three years. That would make the project one of the largest single-site refineries anywhere in the world and strengthen its role in Nigeria’s effort to produce its own fuels on a large scale.
He called the planned NGX listing the refinery’s first real step toward opening its ownership to the public, and added that secondary listings abroad could follow later, even though the Nigerian market remains the starting point.
“We want the Dangote Refinery to be the golden stock of the Exchange,” he said.
The refinery’s offering is expected to draw vigorous attention from institutional investors. With capacity climbing, export receipts rising, and a potential dollar-dividend structure on the table, analysts say the transaction could become one of the defining market events of the decade, setting a new standard for how large Nigerian companies court global capital.
However, the decision to list a 10 percent stake has stirred debate among analysts who say the offer is too small for a project of such scale, and signals his intent to retain tight control of what is now the most powerful industrial asset in the country.
A refinery of this magnitude would normally be expected to offer a wider public float that encourages broader price discovery, deeper liquidity, and greater institutional participation. Instead, Dangote’s decision to cap the float at 10 percent is being read as a strategic move to maintain overwhelming command of the asset. Given the refinery’s revenue potential, control of the boardroom translates into control of pricing, export strategy, and supply decisions that will shape Nigeria’s fuels market for decades.
So far, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s existing stake in the refinery appears to be the largest. NNPC holds 7.2 percent of the project and has openly stated its intention to raise that stake to 20 percent once regulatory conditions allow. If that purchase proceeds, NNPC would become the largest minority shareholder, creating a new equation in which control of the refinery is split between Dangote’s majority position and the government-backed oil company’s strategic influence.
Looking ahead, the dollar-dividend model remains one of the listing’s main attractions. In a currency environment where volatility has made planning difficult for both corporates and individuals, the prospect of regular dollar income has already begun to generate interest among foreign and domestic funds.
