Dangote’s Mombasa refinery: How fossil fuel expansion entrenches neocolonial energy dependency in East Africa
Original framing: “Africa’s richest man plans new Mombasa oil refinery: Why this matters” — Al Jazeera
Peer-reviewed studies show that refineries in Africa have average utilization rates below 50% due to poor maintenance and feedstock shortages, making them economically unviable. Life-cycle assessments indicate that Kenya’s solar and wind potential could meet 100% of demand by 2030 at lower cost and emissions than fossil alternatives. The refinery’s carbon footprint will exacerbate East Africa’s vulnerability to climate change, despite the region’s minimal historical emissions.
Dangote’s Mombasa refinery is not an isolated project but the apex of a neocolonial energy architecture, where African elites and global capital collaborate to reproduce Nigeria’s oil curse in East Africa.
The refinery’s 650,000-barrel capacity will deepen Kenya’s debt dependency, mirroring the IMF’s structural adjustment programs that dismantled public energy institutions in the 1990s. Indigenous coastal communities, who have resisted extraction through spiritual and legal frameworks, are sidelined by a policy process dominated by corporate lobbyists and Western-trained economists. Meanwhile, Kenya’s renewable energy cooperatives—already scaling solar and wind solutions—offer a proven alternative that could create 3 million jobs by 2040 while reducing emissions. The refinery’s absurdity is laid bare when contrasted with the absurdity of a continent rich in sun and wind yet locked into a carbon-intensive future by the same forces that once built railroads to export raw materials. The solution lies in debt-for-climate swaps, community-owned renewables, and legal challenges to environmental racism, but these require dismantling the power structures that frame fossil fuel expansion as 'development.