Lobito refinery stakes: who joins Zambia in Angola’s 200,000-barrel plant?

Angola wants Southern African governments to help finance the 200,000 barrel-a-day Lobito refinery, due to produce its first fuel in December 2027. Zambia has committed to a 26% stake and Botswana has been offered equity. Sonangol says it will keep at least 51% as it looks for $4.8bn to fund the next phase.

On 3,800 hectares of Benguela province on Angola’s Atlantic coast, Sonangol is building what would be the country’s largest refinery. The Lobito refinery is designed for 200,000 barrels a day of medium and light crude and is due to produce its first refined fuel in December 2027.

Sonangol has already committed $1.4bn to the first infrastructure on the site, including its roads and water supply, against a total cost of $6.2bn. Its chief executive, Sebastião Gaspar Martins, put the next phase at $4.8bn when he briefed reporters in February.

That $4.8bn is being sought from financial institutions in China, and Angola’s finance ministry has named China Development Bank as a possible lender. Sonangol has said the loan will not be secured against oil, which would make it Angola’s first borrowing from China since 2017.

Under any financing structure, Sonangol intends to hold at least 51% of the refinery, a condition the Angolan authorities have called non-negotiable. Zambia remains the only partner with a formal commitment, having agreed in 2025 to take a 26% stake as part of a strategy to secure its fuel supply.

Botswana imports about 1.3 billion litres of fuel a year, 60% of it from South Africa, and President Duma Boko said in Gaborone in June 2025 that Angola had offered his country 30% of the remaining equity. His minerals and energy minister, Bogolo Kenewendo, confirmed the offer to parliament in March.

Sonangol said in April that it had received no formal request from Gaborone, with a source at the company telling Reuters that “it was the first time we heard that Botswana was interested”. Five months later President João Lourenço hosted Boko in Luanda, where Jornal de Angola reported him as saying Botswana could join the shareholders “at any moment”. He described Botswana’s interest as “an example of the evolution of relations between the two countries”.

At the SADC Council of Ministers in Durban in August, Angola’s Foreign Minister, Téte António, proposed a meeting of member states in Benguela province to draw regional interest in financing the refinery. The refinery sits at the Atlantic end of the Lobito Corridor, and António described it as “a concrete project, including regional connectivity, through the development corridors”.

Images: Africa is Home