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Dangote’s Lamu refinery plan threatens Kenya’s heritage, energy future, Adow warns – EnviroNews
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Kenya’s decision to grant Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote approval to build a massive oil refinery in Lamu, a town on Lamu Island, has triggered sharp criticism from environmental and energy-transition advocates, with Power Shift Africa Director, Mohamed Adow, calling it “an extraordinary act of environmental recklessness and economic short‑sightedness.”
In a strongly worded statement issued in Nairobi on Thursday, July 9, 2026, Adow warned that the refinery would anchor Kenya to a fading fossil‑fuel economy while endangering one of Africa’s most treasured cultural and ecological landscapes.
A refinery at the doorstep of a world heritage jewel
Lamu is not just another coastal town. It is home to Lamu Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the oldest, best‑preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa. Its surrounding archipelago is a mosaic of mangrove forests, coral reefs, seagrass beds and rich marine breeding grounds that sustain fisheries, tourism and thousands of livelihoods along Kenya’s northern coast.
Adow argues that treating these landscapes as “empty coastlines waiting for industrialisation” ignores centuries of cultural heritage and ecological resilience. The refinery, he says, will place one of Africa’s largest fossil‑fuel developments in one of its most sensitive environments.
A bet on yesterday’s energy system
The heart of Adow’s warning is economic: Kenya risks locking itself into a fossil‑fuel megaproject just as the global energy system undergoes historic transformation.
Africa is in the middle of a clean‑energy surge. In the 12 months to June 2025, the continent imported 15 gigawatts of solar panels from China, a 60% jump from the previous year. Twenty African countries hit record import levels, and 25 imported more than 100 megawatts. Outside South Africa, solar imports nearly tripled in two years.
That momentum accelerated again in March 2026, when African solar imports soared 238% year‑on‑year to $438 million in a single month.
“That is where Africa’s energy transition is happening,” Adow said. “Not inside billion‑dollar oil refineries.”
Electric vehicles rewriting global fuel demand
The refinery’s biggest threat, Adow argues, is not environmental opposition but technological change.
Electric vehicles are rapidly eroding global demand for petrol and diesel. EV sales have skyrocketed from fewer than half a million a decade ago to more than 17 million last year, with electric buses, motorcycles and trucks expanding even faster in developing markets.
“Building a refinery today assumes decades of robust demand for fuels that much of the world is actively trying to phase out,” Adow warned. Kenya risks constructing infrastructure for an economy that is already disappearing.
The danger of stranded assets
Refineries require years of construction and decades of strong fossil‑fuel demand to justify their enormous costs. Solar projects, by contrast, can be deployed in months and are increasingly cheaper and more reliable.
“The danger is not simply that the refinery will pollute,” Adow said. “It is that it will become obsolete long before it has paid for itself.”
Development for whom?
Supporters of the refinery frame it as a development project. But Adow challenges that narrative.
Nearly 600 million Africans still lack access to electricity. Their greatest challenge is not refined petroleum products but the absence of affordable, reliable power.
“A refinery in Lamu will not electrify rural communities or power schools, clinics and small businesses,” he said. “It will certainly not solve energy poverty.”
He also cautioned policymakers to remember history: across Africa, fossil‑fuel megaprojects have repeatedly promised jobs and prosperity but delivered pollution, degraded environments and economic benefits that rarely reach local communities.
“Lamu should not become another entry on that list.”
Kenya’s renewable leadership at stake
Kenya has earned global recognition for its geothermal power, wind farms and rapidly expanding solar capacity. Approving the Lamu refinery, Adow argues, risks undermining that leadership.
“Kenya’s leaders still have the chance to revoke this licence and protect one of Africa’s most extraordinary places,” he said. “But if they choose to trade Lamu’s natural heritage for another generation of fossil‑fuel dependence, future generations will judge whether that was a price worth paying.”
