Zambia Plans to Import Fuel Refined in Neighboring Angola, President Says
Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema speaks during a meeting with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen during the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, DC, on December 15, 2022. 
In recent years, Angola has been enhancing its efforts to increase local refining capacity in order to fully meet domestic demand, as well as to sell the refined petroleum products to neighboring countries, specifically to Zambia. The landlocked nation imports oil products refined in the Middle East through the port of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.Zambia is planning to import fuel from neighboring Angola as part of efforts to lower fuel prices and eliminate supply shocks in the future, according to the country’s President Hakainde Hichilema.During his three-day visit to Angola this week, the Zambian president said that it is unreasonable to buy fuel from across the world if it is refined on the continent and its neighbors can provide the same. He underlined that the government is set to explore all the possibilities of importing refined oil from Angola.
"It makes no sense to import fuel from other parts of the world when we have a neighboring producer," he said at a press conference in Angola’s capital Luanda, adding: "I don't know how we have managed to maintain this situation of buying fuel from Saudi Arabia and other parts of the world and not from our neighbor."
He also revealed Zambia’s plans to buy stakes in Angola’s Lobito refinery in Benguela province along the Atlantic coast, which is now under construction. After its completion, which is scheduled for 2026, the refinery will have the capacity to process up to 200,000 barrels daily. It is expected that private investors, along with Zambia, will own a 70% stake, while the national oil company Sonangol will have a 30% share in the oil infrastructure facility. Angola’s president, Joao Lourenco, for his part, expressed his support for the development of cooperation between the two countries in this particular field, highlighting that its potential is great, as the country is on its way to ramp up refinery capacity.
"It is very natural that Zambia, as our neighbor, has a great interest in acquiring these fuels in Angola, in the neighboring country, especially when Angola has a greater capacity to refine the crude oil it extracts," he stated.
During the visit, Hichilema was given a tour of the Lobito refinery and the Lobito corridor, which includes a port and railroad, and links the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia with the Atlantic coast.Angola and Zambia are now exploring the feasibility of a planned oil pipeline from the Lobito refinery, located in Angola’s port city of Lobito, to the city of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital. The countries signed memoranda of understaning on the subject in 2012 and 2021.
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