The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has announced the attainment of 650,000 barrels per day production capacity from the initial 450,000 daily barrels.

The company on Wednesday attributes the feat to a major operational milestone with the full restoration and optimisation of its Crude Distillation Unit and Motor Spirit production block.

Both the crude distillation and Motor Spirit production units are now running at optimal performance, further strengthening the steady state operations of the refining facility.

Following a scheduled maintenance exercise on the CDU and MS Block, the refinery has also commenced an intensive 72 hour series of performance test runs in collaboration with licensor UOP.

These tests are designed to validate operational efficiency and confirm that all critical parameters meet global standards.

Chief Executive Officer, David Bird, says all remaining processing units will begin their respective performance test runs in Phase 2, scheduled to commence next week.

Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is in Burundi to explore new investment opportunities and cemented plans to expand the Dangote Group’s presence across the continent.

The visit included high-level talks with President Evariste Ndayishimiye at the presidential palace.

Accompanied by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, Dangote described the mission as both diplomatic and economic in scope.

He revealed that two dedicated technical teams—one representing Burundi and the other the Dangote Group—have been constituted to identify priority sectors and develop viable investment projects. “Our focus really is investing heavily in the African continent, not anywhere else, and so Burundi is part and parcel of that African region,” Dangote stated after the meeting.

” Our focus really is investing heavily in the African continent, not anywhere else, and so Burundi is part and parcel of that African region,” Dangote stated after the meeting.

He pointed to strong potential in solid minerals, power generation, agriculture, cement production, and infrastructure development, emphasising that the goal is to build a mutually beneficial partnership that drives shared prosperity.

According to official sources, discussions centered on strategic cooperation in infrastructure, logistics, industrialization, and energy—areas the Burundian government considers essential to its long-term economic transformation.

The engagement aligns with Burundi’s broader ambition to attract large-scale private sector investment and strengthen ties with leading African industrial players.

Observers widely view the engagement as a landmark moment—one that positions Burundi as a credible destination for African mega-investors and integrates the country more firmly into Dangote’s continental expansion strategy.

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, has warned that excess liquidity and the 2027 election cycle could threaten Nigeria’s hard-won economic stability, urging careful management to protect reforms that have strengthened the economy.

Cardoso expressed the concern during the National Economic Council (NEC) Conference 2026 at the Presidential Villa, themed: “Delivering Inclusive Growth and Sustainable National Development: The Renewed Hope National Development Plan,” Cardoso addressed the “Fiscal and Monetary Outlook 2026–2030: Priorities and Imperatives” panel.

Cardoso said: “The cost of loose monetary policy accessibility, the cost of having to soak up all that liquidity was a problem.

Next slide and persistent inflation. Inflation has served the 34.6% dysfunctional FX market.

You all remember, there’s a huge backlog of over $7 billion and that the parallel market premium exceeded 16% loss of investor confidence.

Everybody took flights, nobody went to hold Naira, and it was a very desperate situation.h

Then, of course, there was direct intervention by the Central Bank, which reached an unprecedented level of 10.93 trillion Naira, which honestly was a huge problem.”

He noted that these interventions “provided short-term support, which many people would argue, but created long-term mandatory distortions, excess liquidity and increased cost of liquidity management.”

Cardoso outlined the three-pillar response that restored stability.

First, “a decisive monetary policy on V set NPR increased by a very aggressive 875 basis points to decisively tackle inflation. And of course, we move back to what we call orthodox monetary policy.

We phase out all quasi-fiscal development finance interventions to focus squarely on price stability, because without that, you have no growth, you have no investment, you have no growth.”

Second, he stressed the importance of transparency and market-driven reforms: “Engineering a market-driven ethics regime, which we’ve been talking about for a long time, unification and price discovery, clearing the FX backlog and institutionalised transparency, which, to my mind, is a very, very key ingredient of managing the FX market.”

Third, Cardoso highlighted fiscal coordination: “Enhanced fiscal coordination, adhering to statutory limits of deficit financing, good ways and means advances to the government, and we had to have a sharp decline in that, from 2.65% in 2023 to 0.69% in 2024.”

The results, he said, are evident across key economic indicators:

“Sustained GDP growth of 3.98%, strong current accounts, for a very long time we haven’t had that $3.42 billion surplus recorded in the third quarter of 2020, by a significant improvement, significant maturation, inflation at 15.15%, banking sector soundness, and growing external reserves of $49 billion as of February 5, 2026.”