Africa's largest pension fund and largest asset manager have toured the Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals complex in Lagos as Dangote Group moves closer to listing the facility on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, offering retail investors direct ownership stakes in one of the continent's largest industrial assets.
The visit was led by South Africa's Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), which administers retirement benefits for more than 1.8 million public servants, and the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), Africa's largest asset manager with approximately $230 billion under management. Private investment firm Alterra Capital Partners also joined the delegation, which was led by GEPF Chairperson Frans Baleni and PIC Chief Executive Patrick Dlamini.
Dangote Group President and CEO Aliko Dangote said the planned listing was designed to give Africans direct access to the continent's industrial transformation. He added that demand for the refinery's output spanning polypropylene, aviation fuel, and refined petroleum products had already outpaced production capacity.
"We thought about Nigeria first and then exports, but even with our current production, we are practically living hand to mouth because market demand is extremely high," he said.
Dlamini said the visit had reinforced PIC's conviction in African-led industrial projects, noting the corporation was actively seeking partnerships aligned with its mandate to deploy long-term capital in service of industrialisation across the continent. GEPF's Baleni said the refinery challenged longstanding assumptions about the scale of what Africa could build.
"What has been built here is reshaping how the world should think about African industrial capability," he said.
The investor visit coincides with a separate milestone under Dangote Industries' Vision 2030 agenda. The Group has begun groundwork for the Olokola Deep Seaport, a maritime and industrial development spanning more than 10,000 hectares across Ogun and Ondo states along the Gulf of Guinea coastline.
Managing Director for Infrastructure and Logistics Capt. Jamil Abubakar described the port as a critical gateway for Nigeria's export capacity, saying it would handle outbound shipments of fertilisers, petrochemicals, and refined petroleum products, accommodate future LNG exports, and support the inbound movement of industrial machinery and raw materials.
The Olokola project is expected to attract foreign direct investment, create jobs across logistics and manufacturing, and strengthen Nigeria's competitiveness under the African Continental Free Trade Area.