Dangote courts retail investors with $4 entry to record IPO

Billionaire Aliko Dangote has opened up ownership of his Nigerian refinery to ordinary Africans for as little as $4 apiece, calling it an initial public offering “for the people.”

Investors are able to take part in Africa’s largest IPO to date by buying as little as 10 shares at 525 naira ($0.40) each in the upcoming listing that will value the refinery at $49 billion.

“It’s all about trying to create ease of participation,” Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals FZE Chief Executive Officer David Bird said Monday. “All you need is a BVN,” he said, referring to a bank verification number used by Nigerian lenders for their customers. For investors who don’t have one, steps will be taken to create them, he said.

The company hasn’t stipulated what percentage of the shares for sale will be allocated to retail investors, but wants participation to be “as broad as possible,” with Dangote planning to prioritise allocations to individual holders in the event of oversubscription, Bird said.

The founder’s offer to retail investors can do for Africa what Elon Musk’s sale of shares in SpaceX did in the US, where access channels included using upstart brokers such as Robinhood Markets to make access easy.

The main target audience is Nigerians at home and in the diaspora, but the IPO is very much pan-African, Bird said.

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Usually, Africans looking to invest in an IPO would typically have to go through traditional banks and brokers. But the size of this offering, coupled with the relatively underdeveloped state of African capital markets, gives fintech brokers an opportunity to bridge gaps in traditional market infrastructure and broaden investor access.

Upstart fintech brokers like Bamboo, Daba and MyStocks have been jockeying for allocation and will compete with traditional banks to make the IPO a reality.

Dangote Petroleum plans to issue a prospectus on September 14 pending approval from Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission, and the document will list the platforms that the company is working with for the IPO, Chief Financial Officer Bruce Tanner said.

The fintech companies have been signing deals with Nigerian brokers to ensure they can service clients taking part in the IPO.

Daba Finance is partnering with Lagos-based Coronation Group, CEO Boum III Jr. said, adding that his firm aims to allocate about $50 million in the offering.

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Bamboo, which launched Nigerian stocks on its platform in 2024, is working with Lambeth Capital.

The IPO is scheduled to open September 14 and close October 13, with listing likely to take place in early November, Bird said.

In a report initiative coverage on the company released Monday, Renaissance Capital Africa said Dangote Refineries has “crossed its earnings inflection.”

The refinery reported earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $2.6 billion in the six months through June, almost five times 2025 full-year Ebitda of $545.3 million, RenCap said.

“The speed of the financial transformation is extraordinary by any comparator in global industrials,” analysts Divine Olumese and Olumide Sole wrote in the report.

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