A 650,000 bpd refinery at full capacity moves East Africa from approximately 75 percent fuel import dependency toward meaningful partial self-sufficiency. The foreign exchange effect is direct: Tanzania alone spent an estimated $2.5 billion on petroleum imports in 2024, and domestic refining at scale would materially reduce that outflow and relieve pressure on central bank reserves across the region.
On trade, the refinery creates intra-African flows that currently do not exist — crude from Uganda via EACOP in, refined products out to Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC — directly aligned with AfCFTA’s architecture and positioning Tanzania as a net energy exporter for the first time. On employment, direct construction and operational jobs are estimated at 50,000 to 100,000, with a larger indirect multiplier across logistics and services. The longer-term industrial consequence — downstream petrochemicals, fertiliser production, plastics manufacturing — is the more significant
figure for the region’s manufacturing trajectory.