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The Dangote refinery’s $1.6 billion share sale drew investors from across the continent, Africa’s richest man said, in a rare demonstration that Africa’s savings can move across borders at the scale needed to fund its biggest companies without passing through London or Johannesburg. The continent’s largest ever initial public offering, aimed at funding a $14 billion-plus plan to expand the capacity of the giant refinery in Lagos State, closed on Tuesday. The share sale, which values the company founded by Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote at nearly $50 billion, is widely seen as a test case for whether the continent’s domestic savings, estimated by multilateral lender Africa Finance Corporation at $4 trillion, can help deepen its capital markets. But the deal also poses a challenge to Johannesburg, which has long traded on its status as Africa’s most liquid capital market — larger than the rest of the continent’s bourses combined — because the IPO largely bypassed it. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange, which said in August that Dangote had “strong intent” to pursue a South African listing, told Semafor that local banks were “exploring JSE-listed instruments” offering exposure to Dangote.
document fetched 2026-10-29 03:03 · canonical https://semafor.com/article/10/28/2026/dangote-ipo-puts-african-capital-to-work-in-continents-largest-ever-ipo