South Africa’s leading pension and investment institutions are exploring potential investment opportunities in the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals following a high-level visit to the facility.

According to a company statement on Tuesday, delegates from the South African Government Employees Pension Fund, the Public Investment Corporation, and Alterra Capital Partners visited the Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals complex as well as Dangote Fertiliser Limited in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos.

The statement noted that GEPF is Africa’s largest defined-benefit pension fund, managing retirement benefits for over 1.8 million public sector workers in South Africa, while PIC is the continent’s biggest asset manager.

The Chairperson of GEPF, Frans Baleni, said the refinery demonstrates that Africa is capable of executing transformational infrastructure projects at scale.

“If it can be done anywhere else in the world, it can be done in Africa. This project has shown that the continent is capable of achieving world-class industrialisation at scale,” he said.

Baleni added that the significance of the project extends far beyond Nigeria’s borders, underscoring its broader relevance to Africa’s industrial and economic development.

“What has been built here is reshaping how the world should think about African industrial capability, and it should reshape how Africa thinks about itself. For too long, projects of this magnitude have been associated with other parts of the world.

“The Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals Complex is a powerful demonstration that, with visionary leadership and long-term capital, that perception no longer holds. This is the kind of African-led industrial scale that institutional investors on this continent should be backing,” he said.

The Chief Executive Officer of the PIC, Patrick Dlamini, described the refinery as one of the most transformative industrial projects on the continent.

Quoting former South African President Nelson Mandela, Dlamini said, “It always looks impossible until it’s done. This project is redefining the story of Africa and the possibilities of Africa.”

He added that PIC, which manages about $230 billion in assets largely on behalf of the GEPF, is actively pursuing long-term investment partnerships aligned with infrastructure development, industrialisation, and economic transformation across Africa, including major projects such as the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals.

In his remarks, the President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, said the planned listing of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals on the Nigerian Exchange is aimed at democratising wealth creation and enabling Africans to directly participate in the continent’s industrial transformation.

Dangote stressed that Africa’s next phase of economic growth must be built on large-scale industrial projects that can create jobs, expand domestic production capacity, and deliver broad-based prosperity across the continent.