African CEOs Tour Dangote Refinery with Lagos Business School, Inspired by Visionary Leadership
On July 10, 2025, Lagos Business School (LBS) led 24 CEOs from its Global CEO Africa Programme on a transformative visit to the $20 billion Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria.
The delegation, comprising executives from Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, was hosted by Aliko Dangote, President of Dangote Group, who urged African investors to drive continental development through bold, local investments.
Prof Olayinka David-West, Dean of LBS, emphasized the visit’s significance: “On behalf of the Lagos Business School and the GCEO Africa Programme 5, I think it is only right to say a big thank you.
We are not thanking you for just the visit, we are thanking you for paving the way and showing us what Africa can do. You’ve said it all. Nobody is going to work for us if we don’t work for ourselves. We need to support one another, we are one Africa, we need to do it all by ourselves.” She highlighted the refinery as a testament to private sector vision, fostering leadership to tackle Africa’s challenges and support frameworks like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Dangote shared the challenges of building the world’s largest single-train refinery, stating: “People believe building a refinery is like building a house, but, like what I keep saying, if I knew what we were going to face, I wouldn’t have started it at all. So, the luck that we’ve had now as a group was because we didn’t know what we were getting into, really, and we believe that nothing is impossible.”
He noted that despite initial skepticism, the group persevered, driven by a commitment to energy self-sufficiency for Nigeria and Africa. “Apart from Algeria and Libya, which are self-sufficient in Africa, technically, everybody is an importer,” he added, criticizing foreign actors for undermining African industries through imports.
Patrick Akinwuntan, Academic Director of the Global CEO Africa Programme, praised Dangote’s vision: “For this type of project, the largest single-train refinery in the world, that’s beyond what you see, it’s what you envision.
The capacity and the audacity of Alhaji Dangote to bring that vision into reality means every time he can imagine that and every time he sees a problem, he thinks of how to solve it rather than get scared away from the magnitude of the problem.”
He explained that the programme, a collaboration with Strathmore Business School in Nairobi, aims to nurture leaders who view Africa as a single market, with modules in Nairobi, Lagos, and New Haven, USA.
The visit underscored the refinery’s role in reducing Africa’s reliance on fuel imports, with Dangote noting its capacity to meet Nigeria’s petroleum needs and support West African markets. The CEOs, representing sectors like banking, construction, IT, and public services, left inspired by the facility’s world-class execution and its potential to drive economic growth across the continent.
