The forces driving Africa’s industrial build-out

Posted: September 15, 2026

This month, construction work is due to start on a new, 700,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Kenya. Readers suffering déja-vu are forgiven—a near-identical refinery went into operation in Nigeria in late 2024. Behind both facilities is Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man and a symbol for the industrial build-out currently underway across the continent.

Bringing Dangote’s Lagos refinery online was far from straightforward, but the facility has been running more-or-less smoothly for about a year now. In that (admittedly short) time, Nigeria has become energy self-sufficient. Over the summer months, the refinery even exported jet fuel to Europe—a hitherto unthinkable dynamic.

If Dangote’s refining projects go to plan, once the refinery in Kenya is complete—a process that is budgeted to take roughly four years and $16 billion—it will be the second-largest refinery on the continent. In the meantime, its Nigerian counterpart will have doubled in capacity, to become the biggest refinery in the world.

“We’re really planning something very big within the African continent,” Dangote recently told the BBC, sharing his desire to make most African countries “self-sufficient in their own energy needs, fertilizer and coal.”

For a continent rich in natural resources, self-sufficiency may not sound like an ambitious goal. But that vision—one which much of the continent’s political and business class subscribes to—amounts to a huge, high-stakes project: laying the industrial foundations that will enable Africa’s next generation to thrive.

From extracting raw materials to processing them

Gold, oil, cobalt: the African continent has long been a global source—willingly or otherwise—of vital raw materials. But its lack of processing capabilities means it has historically needed to import finished goods.

That is starting to change. From Algeria to Angola, from Senegal to Djibouti, multi-billion-dollar processing projects are in the works.

A decade ago, projects of this size were far less numerous.

“In many markets, the underlying resource base and inputs have been established for years,” Gustav von Ludwig, a specialist in industrial software who’s been working in African markets for over 20 years, told Our Industrial Life.

What’s changed, according to von Ludwig, is the willingness of companies and governments to keep reinvesting domestically. That sustained commitment, he says, is helping to turn long-discussed potential into more durable, investable industrial platforms.

Serving and supplying a growing population

Arguably the single largest driving force behind the Africa’s industrial expansion is demographics: the median age on the continent is 19.5 (versus 45 in Europe); according to the U.N., between 2024 and 2050 the working-age population will almost double, going from 883 million to 1.6 billion.

A young population, coming rapidly to an age of economic productivity, makes for a strong business case. “The growth of population density in Africa is now creating markets—particularly urban markets—of a type that we just didn’t have before,” economist Joe Studwell told Bloomberg’s Odd Lots last month. “So you build your cement plants and the demand for what you're producing is just massively greater than it was in the past. The same for refined oil products. The same for fertilizer.”

But a young population also comes with challenges. It’s not enough for industrial facilities to sell to this new generation—they must also offer them jobs and the chance to grow their skills.

“The people-and-process dimension is sometimes treated as secondary,” says von Ludwig. “Investing in people—building skills and creating pathways into real operational roles—and strengthening local capability—should be integral to any long-term investment.”

Building a more resilient Africa

Industrial build-out, booming population, self-sufficiency—behind it all is a recognition that for the continent to thrive, its industrial and social foundations need to be more stable and more resilient.

And that’s before any appraisal of the world outside Africa, which is far less predictable and generous than it once was—according to McKinsey research, Africa is receiving $30 billion/year less in foreign aid compared to 2023.

“Volatility in what we’d normally think of as ‘stable markets’ has brought home the need to be clear-eyed about where we are—and what our ambitions are—in Africa,” says von Ludwig. “We need to build resilience at home through stability, integration, and sustained investment, so we’re less exposed to external shocks.”

Building an industrial base capable of serving the next generation of Africans is a mammoth undertaking—especially in the context of a less stable world. The high sticker price of projects like the East Africa refinery, however, will be considered a bargain if such projects help realize the potential of the young, ambitious and educated Africans entering the workforce.

“We attended so many conferences and people say, ‘yes, the potential, the potential.’ But you have to put that potential into reality,” Aliko Dangote said in his BBC interview. “But the only way you are going to do that is by us Africans to drive [economic growth]. Nobody—and I repeat, nobody—is going to drive it for us.”