🇳🇪Niger has signed a $1.9 billion deal to build a new oil refinery and petrochemical plant in Dosso, South Western Niger, 130-140km South east of Niamey. The aim is simple: refine more of its own crude at home, import less fuel, and sell some of it to neighbours in the Sahel. The agreement was signed in Niamey on 15 August with Zimar Group and High Tech. The companies are meant to pay for the plant, build it, run it, then hand it to the state. Construction is supposed to take three years. They then operate it for 13 years. The money still has to be raised within 12 months. The planned plant would process 100,000 barrels a day five times bigger than Niger’s only working refinery at Zinder, which handles 20,000. If it gets built, it would be one of the largest refineries in West Africa, behind Nigeria’s Dangote and Ghana’s Sentuo. Niger now produces about 110,000 barrels a day, but refines only a fifth of that. The rest goes out as crude, mostly through the pipeline to Benin, and the country buys fuel back. A plant this size could flip that. Officials also talk about supplying Mali and Burkina Faso. There is a catch. This is a contract, not a finished refinery. The builders still need financing, and some reports say Zimar has little public record of a project this big. A 100,000-barrel plant would also need a lot of Niger’s current crude, most of which is now exported. If the money comes through, Dosso could become a real energy hub. If it doesn’t, the deal stays on paper. Niger is showing what African can achieve once the shackles of imperialism has been successfully broken.