Dangote opens Africa's largest IPO to fund a 1.4 million barrel expansion

Dangote Petroleum Refinery opened books on 14 September for 4.1 billion new shares at 525 naira each. The sale is meant to raise 2.15 trillion naira, about $1.6 billion at the stated exchange rate, and would become the largest initial public offering ever completed on an African exchange if the offer is filled. A greenshoe could lift proceeds toward $2.1 billion. Trading is scheduled to start on the Nigerian Exchange in late November after the books close on 13 October.

The issue is a primary sale. The cash goes to the plant in the Lekki Free Trade Zone, not to existing shareholders cashing out. The new stock is about 3.3 percent of the enlarged capital. Aliko Dangote, who still controls the group, has marketed the deal as a retail offer. The minimum ticket is 10 shares, or 5,250 naira, roughly four dollars. Applications run through approved digital channels as well as the usual brokers.

The implied valuation sits near $47 billion to $49 billion, depending on whether the greenshoe is used. That is a step up from the July private placement, which sold about 6 percent of the company for $2.5 billion at a valuation Reuters put near $40 billion. That placement was 3.7 times subscribed. The company returned unallocated funds in part to keep stock for the public book. After the private round Dangote's stake fell to about 87 percent. A full public take-up would cut it toward 84 percent.

The plant processes 700,000 barrels a day. Construction ran for a decade and cost about $20 billion. It reached nameplate capacity this year. Management has set out a $14.3 billion plan to double throughput to 1.4 million barrels a day by 2029. In the first half of 2026 the refinery reported $1.82 billion in profit after tax on revenue of more than $13 billion, reversing a $476 million loss in 2025. Chief executive David Bird told Reuters that the Iran war raised demand for the plant's diesel and jet fuel in African and western European markets after Gulf supply routes tightened.

That wartime premium is part of the pitch and part of the risk. Brent traded above $107 a barrel on 14 September after Houthi attacks on Saudi infrastructure and a shutdown on the kingdom's East-West pipeline. High crude prices lift refining margins when product shortages persist. They also raise working-capital needs and political attention. Dangote has said a secondary listing in the United States could follow if the Lagos debut holds.

Africa Finance Corporation and other development lenders took part in the July book. The public offer now tests whether Nigerian households and pension money will sit beside them. The naira price is fixed. The dollar proceeds will move with the currency. At 1,323.74 naira to the dollar, the figure used in the Reuters facts sheet on 14 September, 525 naira is about 40 cents a share.

The listing also sits next to another Lagos capital-markets story that broke the same day. JPMorgan's new GBI-EM Edge local-currency government bond index, due by the end of September, gives Nigeria a 7.4 percent weight, just under the 8 percent country cap. Eligible naira bonds in that benchmark total $17.47 billion across 16 instruments, with an average yield to maturity of 17.1 percent. Frontier African markets make up 44.5 percent of the new index. The two events are separate. One is equity in a single industrial plant. The other is a debt benchmark. Together they put Nigerian assets back in front of global allocators who left after the 2015 index exit and years of naira and fuel-subsidy strain.

The refinery's political weight inside Nigeria is hard to separate from the share sale. The plant has already changed the country's import bill for petrol and the bargaining position of fuel marketers. A listed vehicle with tens of thousands of small holders will make future disputes over crude supply, pricing and regulation more public. The prospectus will be read in Abuja as well as in Lagos dealing rooms.

Investors who buy the minimum lot are buying a claim on a single-site heavy industrial asset whose earnings this year were lifted by a war that may not last. They are also buying a claim on the only large modern refinery on the Atlantic coast of Africa. The books stay open for four weeks. The first print in November will show whether the people's IPO label matches the order file.

What happens after listing is the more durable question. Doubling capacity by 2029 requires feedstock, power, product markets and a balance sheet that can carry $14 billion of extra spend. Public shareholders will now see those numbers every quarter. That is the change the offer actually makes.