Aliko Dangote is expanding his infrastructure footprint in East Africa with a $660 million refined petroleum pipeline linking Ethiopia and Djibouti, a project designed to cut transport costs and strengthen fuel supply across one of the region’s key trade corridors.

The project will include a 120-kilometer pipeline connecting the two countries, alongside major petroleum storage facilities. Developers expect the infrastructure to become operational within 18 months, according to a spokesperson in Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office.

Storage capacity anchors project

The planned system will include about 375,000 cubic meters of storage capacity at Damerjog in Djibouti and another 800,000 cubic meters at Dewele in Ethiopia.

The infrastructure is intended to reduce logistics costs and delays along the Ethiopia-Djibouti corridor, while improving energy security and supply-chain resilience, Abiy said. The corridor is a major trade route for landlocked Ethiopia, making fuel infrastructure strategically important to the country’s economy.

Abiy announced the project during a visit to Djibouti alongside President Ismail Omar Guelleh and Dangote. The partnership will be developed by Ethiopian Investment Holdings and Dangote Group.

The deal adds another major project to Dangote’s growing business interests in Ethiopia. The Nigerian billionaire’s group is separately developing a $4 billion fertiliser pipeline and power plant, as well as a polypropylene packaging facility in the country.

Dangote expands East Africa push

The pipeline also extends Dangote’s push into energy and industrial infrastructure beyond Nigeria, where his group operates one of Africa’s largest oil refineries and a major petrochemical complex.

In Kenya, Dangote and the government are scheduled to break ground next week on a proposed 700,000-barrel-per-day crude oil refinery in Lamu. The project would add another large-scale energy investment to the group’s growing East African portfolio.

For Ethiopia and Djibouti, the new pipeline could reshape the economics of moving refined petroleum between the two countries by adding dedicated pipeline capacity and more than 1.17 million cubic meters of combined storage.

The project therefore links Dangote’s regional expansion with a broader effort by the two governments to strengthen fuel infrastructure and reduce vulnerabilities in a strategically important supply corridor.