DP World has signed a $7 billion memorandum of understanding with Ogun State, Nigeria, to build the Gateway Deep Sea Port and an adjacent Blue Marine Special Economic Zone — a deal inked in Paris under the watch of President Bola Tinubu, according to Business Insider Africa. The ceremony was also attended by Marine and Blue Economy Minister Adegboyega Oyetola and Nigerian Ports Authority Managing Director Dr Abubakar Dantsoho.
The port itself is designed to handle the largest class of cargo vessels, with a planned 4-kilometre berth and an 18-metre draft — specifications that would make it one of the deepest-draft facilities on Nigeria's coastline. The adjoining Blue Marine Special Economic Zone will stretch across 10,000 hectares, hosting factories, warehouses, processing facilities, and export-oriented businesses intended to grow Nigeria's non-oil export base. The project is projected to generate roughly 50,000 jobs across both developments.
The Ogun location carries pointed historical irony. Aliko Dangote revealed in a recent Al Jazeera interview that he originally tried to site his now-operational $20 billion Lagos refinery in Ogun State, acquiring a free trade zone there to build a port that would serve the refinery and third-party users. A then-governor blocked the project for three and a half years, forcing Dangote's team to service debt on capital held in escrow — money they could not deploy while engineering was stalled. Dangote eventually abandoned the site, paid $100 million for a Lagos parcel, and built the refinery there instead. The same state that turned away Africa's wealthiest man's $20 billion project has now welcomed a $7 billion commitment from the Dubai-headquartered global port operator.
For DP World, Ogun represents a strategic beachhead on West Africa's busiest trade corridor. Nigeria's ports — dominated by Apapa in Lagos — are chronically congested; a deep-sea alternative with an integrated SEZ gives exporters and importers a credible second option and gives manufacturers bonded-zone incentives to locate outside the Lagos megacity. The 10,000-hectare zone is large enough to become a self-contained industrial district if anchor tenants commit early.
Meanwhile, Tanzania's $42 billion LNG export project — one of the largest energy bets in sub-Saharan Africa — has entered the final phase of legal negotiations, with TPDC Managing Director Mussa Makame telling the press in Dodoma that the bulk of commercial, fiscal, and revenue-sharing terms have been resolved, per Business Insider Africa. Legal teams are now meeting in Arusha to finalise Host Government Agreements and the corresponding implementation legislation, with completion targeted around mid-2025.
The project — an onshore LNG export terminal in the Lindi region — is led by Equinor and Shell, with ExxonMobil, Pavilion Energy, Medco Energi, and Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) as co-partners. Equinor's Block 2 offshore operations alone have confirmed more than 20 trillion cubic feet of gas; total project reserves are estimated at over 47.13 trillion cubic feet. A framework agreement between Tanzania and Equinor was first signed in June 2022, but negotiations have dragged well beyond initial timelines. Even after the legal texts are finalised, they must clear government review, ratification, and parliamentary procedure before a Final Investment Decision can be taken — meaning commercial production, projected to begin roughly eight years after ratification, remains a mid-2030s proposition at the earliest.
The strategic calculus for Tanzania has sharpened recently. Disruptions to energy transit through the Strait of Hormuz — stemming from US-Israeli military action against Iran — have renewed buyer-side urgency for LNG supply chains that bypass the Persian Gulf. An East African export terminal fed by 47-plus trillion cubic feet of reserves would be well-positioned to serve Asian and European buyers seeking supply diversification.
Why it matters: These two deals — a port-and-SEZ package in Nigeria and a decade-in-the-making LNG negotiation in Tanzania — illustrate where African governments are finding traction with foreign capital right now: hard infrastructure with clear revenue logic, backed by sovereign or quasi-sovereign counterparties. For investors and operators, the Ogun deal signals that Nigeria's infrastructure deficit is finally attracting credible anchor commitments outside Lagos, while Tanzania's LNG endgame, however drawn-out, could reshape East Africa's energy export profile for a generation.