Aliko Dangote has revealed when the Dangote Refinery IPO will launch.
Philips News reports that the President and Chief Executive of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, says the planned Initial Public Offering (IPO) of the Dangote Refinery will launch in September 2026, after attracting investor demand of approximately $2 billion.
This online newspaper understands that the Dangote Group President disclosed this during an interaction with journalists after leading the chairman of First HoldCo, Femi Otedola, top executives of First HoldCo and its subsidiaries on a tour of the refinery complex in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial city, on Wednesday, May 20, 2026.
“We are trying to make sure that by September, we’ll be out there in the market to sell the IPO,” he said.
The richest black man in the world revealed that investors had already indicated strong interest in the offering before its official launch.
“Right now, when we even say we are going to do private placement, already we have people who have actually requested to buy. And we have an amount of almost $2 billion,” he said.
“We are not selling after that, but we’ll see what we can allocate to them. We can see what we can allocate to an IPO.”
He also noted that the refinery IPO was designed mainly for public participation, with the company targeting wider public ownership.
“Our target really is to get the larger part of the society to buy, yes.”
He added that the refinery’s scale and projected earnings had continued to attract investor attention globally.
Dangote also stated that the company wanted more people to participate in the refinery’s growth and future value.
“What we are trying to do is actually bring in people when it is at this low level and for them to have an upside,” he said.
“We want it to be like when you buy Amazon, or you buy Apple. All those people everybody has become a millionaire, and that’s what we want to bring into Africa,” he stressed.
Located within the Lekki Free Zone in Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial city, the Dangote Refinery operates with a processing capacity of 650,000 barrels of crude oil daily, ranking it as the biggest single-train refinery on the African continent. After several years of development and investments estimated at nearly $20 billion, the plant commenced full-scale production of diesel, aviation fuel, and petrol in 2024.
The proposed initial public offering (IPO) is projected to rank among the largest financial market deals ever seen in Africa. Market projections suggest the refinery could be valued at roughly $50 billion, with up to 10 percent of the company potentially offered to investors.
Dangote refinery now plays a major role in Nigeria’s energy sector by cutting the country’s reliance on imported fuel and strengthening domestic refining operations.
On Wednesday, Dangote Group President revealed that about twelve European countries rely on aviation fuel exports from the Dangote Petroleum Refinery to stabilize supplies and prevent travel disruptions.
