African leaders and business executives delivered a unified call for industrialisation at the Africa We Build Summit 2026 in Nairobi on Thursday, arguing that the continent is surrendering billions of dollars in wealth and millions of jobs by shipping out unprocessed oil, gold, and iron ore instead of refining and manufacturing them at home.
The inaugural summit, hosted by the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) at the JW Marriott Hotel in Nairobi under the theme “Infrastructure as the Engine of Industrialisation,” brought together heads of state, investors, and development finance institutions to accelerate Africa’s shift from commodity exporter to industrial producer.
Aliko Dangote, whose 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Lagos has already begun supplying refined petroleum to Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and other African nations, proposed scaling that model to East Africa. “If the president of Kenya or Uganda supports us, we’ll build an oil refinery in this region just as big as the one in Nigeria,” he said, adding that Africa must stop being afraid to process its own resources.
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni said his country is already taking incremental steps. “We’re building a small oil refinery for the local market first, some parts of Tanzania and Kenya, with a capacity of 50,000 to 60,000 barrels,” he said. He framed the cost of inaction in stark terms, noting that unprocessed gold fetches $60,000 per kilogram while processed gold commands $168,000.
Museveni also drew on a direct example from Uganda’s mining sector to illustrate the scale of the loss. An investor from India, he said, was purchasing the country’s iron ore at $45 per tonne and reselling it at $900 per tonne. “Mind you our ore is the best in the world, about 70 percent pure,” he said. “And that means we export all the jobs created. So I stopped them.”
Dangote pushed for deeper integration as a prerequisite for industrial scale. “Let African governments copy what Kenya has done. Let’s allow free movement of people without visa requirements within Africa,” he said. He also warned that reliance on foreign capital is an inherently unstable model. “Foreign investors only come to Africa when the business conditions are looking rosy,” he said, adding that domestic wealth tends to flow back out of the continent once accumulated.
Kenya’s President William Ruto addressed the tensions that undermine regional cooperation. “Petty jealousy is a problem in Africa,” he said, recounting how an initial request for Uganda to supply iron ore for processing in Nairobi was declined, prompting Kenyan investors to establish processing plants in Uganda instead. He described the outcome as beneficial to both countries, noting that importing steel from Uganda is cheaper than importing from foreign markets.
The summit was designed to move beyond policy dialogue toward actionable commitments, with sessions focused on unlocking domestic capital, advancing regional corridor investments, and developing strategic minerals value chains.
The discussions take place against a backdrop of real, if uneven, industrial progress. The Dangote Refinery has shipped 17 cargoes of gasoline to other African nations and has expanded its export footprint to East Africa, delivering a 317,000-barrel petrol cargo to Mozambique in March, its first shipment to the region. Ghana’s government has been among those exploring supply arrangements with the facility.
The two-day summit concludes on Friday, 24 April.
