“We Had Planned This Long Ago!” Museveni Sparks Debate Over Massive New $16B Kenyan Oil Refinery

President Yoweri Museveni has stirred the pot across East Africa after boldly declaring that Uganda will not back down on building its own domestic oil refinery, despite the groundbreaking of a colossal new $16 billion facility in Kenya. Speaking at the launch of the massive 700,000-barrel-per-day Dangote East Africa Petroleum Refinery in Lamu, Kenya, Museveni stood alongside Kenyan President William Ruto and Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote to demand that Africa stop exporting its wealth. While Museveni celebrated the Kenyan project, he firmly put to bed any ideas that Uganda would scrap its own oil ambitions. "We are going to build a small refinery in Uganda. We had planned this long ago. We can’t change that," Museveni insisted, adding that Uganda’s refinery will serve both the local market and the continent's interior. The Ugandan leader didn't stop there. He publicly questioned what happened to Tanzania's stalled refinery project in Tanga, vowwing to confront Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan and Ruto to find out exactly "what the problem was." Museveni warned that while Dangote has offered East African states a 30% equity stake in the Kenyan plant, sharing profits isn't enough. "It does not answer the issue of jobs," Museveni argued, blasting the historical trend of exporting raw materials like coffee, cotton, and gold, which robs Africans of billions in value-addition and employment. The mega-project in Lamu, set to sit along the LAPSSET corridor, is expected to create a staggering 60,000 jobs during construction and will process crude from Kenya’s Turkana fields and other regional sources. While President Ruto hailed the investment as a historic leap for African energy independence and Aliko Dangote pledged to commission the facility within 40 months, Museveni's intense focus on securing distinct Ugandan jobs and reviving dead regional projects has set the stage for a fiery new era of East African economic competition.