….Wins Best Bank in Nine out of 20 African Subsidiaries

Africa’s Global Bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, has once again, reaffirmed its leadership as one of the continent’s most innovative and resilient financial institutions, as the bank has, for the third time in five years, been named the African Bank of the year 2025 by the Banker.com.

UBA also won the Best Bank of the Year awards in nine of its 20 African subsidiaries, bringing its total awards this year to ten as UBA Benin, UBA Chad, UBA Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), UBA Liberia, UBA Mali, UBA Mozambique, UBA Senegal, UBA Sierra Leone, and UBA Zambia, all came out tops as the best banks in their respective countries, underscoring the bank’s strength across West, Central and Southern Africa and highlighting the depth of its Pan-African franchise.

The Banker.com, a leading global finance news publication published by the Financial Times of London, organises the annual Bank of the Year Awards, and this year’s edition was held at a grand ceremony at the Peninsula, London, on Wednesday.

The Chief Executive Officer, UBA UK, Deji Adeyelure, received the awards on behalf of the bank, representing the Group Managing Director/CEO, Oliver Alawuba, and was accompanied by the bank’s Head Business Development, Mark Ifashe, and Head, Financial Institutions, Shilpam Jha.

The Banker’s awards are widely regarded as the most respected and rigorous in the global banking industry, celebrating institutions that demonstrate outstanding performance, innovation and strategic execution.

In its remarks on UBA’s winnings, the banker.com said, “For the third time in five years, UBA Group has won the coveted Bank of the Year award for Africa. UBA Group time after time punches above its weight against its larger African rivals. The bank this year also takes home nine separate country awards (one more than it gained for its last continental win in 2024), equivalent to around a quarter of the awards for the continent, and more than any of its continent-wide rivals.”

Continuing, it said, “Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that the awards were won across a broad geographic spread, going to lenders based in the Economic Community of West African States (Benin, Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and former member Mali), the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (Chad, Republic of Congo) and the Southern African Development Community (Mozambique, Zambia). Its award wins were particularly notable in the highly competitive categories for Benin and Mozambique.”

The Banker also highlighted UBA’s strong financial performance and commitment to future growth. In 2024, the Group recorded a 46.8 per cent increase in assets and a 6.1 per cent rise in pre-tax profits in local currency terms, while continuing to invest significantly in talent and technology. West Africa remains UBA’s heartland, with operating revenue and profit increasing by 87 per cent and 89 per cent respectively in H1 2025.

The bank’s digital and innovation leadership was equally recognised. During the year under review, and launched its Advance Top-Up buy-now-pay-later feature on the *919# USSD platform, expanding financial access for customers, while the bank’s chatbot Leo continued its strong growth trajectory, with transaction volumes rising by 29 per cent year-on-year in H1 2025. Notably, in August, Leo became the first African banking chatbot to enable cross-border payments via the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS).

UBA’s Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Oliver Alawuba, while reacting to the achievement, said the recognition affirms the bank’s long-term strategy and customer-first philosophy.

“This honour reflects the strength of our Pan-African network, the trust of our customers, and the dedication of our people. Winning Africa’s Bank of the Year for the third time in five years is not by chance; it is a testament to disciplined execution, innovation, and a deep understanding of the markets we serve,” Alawuba said.

“Our nine country awards across diverse regions of Africa show that UBA is not just growing, but growing with impact. We remain committed to driving financial inclusion, supporting economic development, and deploying technology that makes banking simpler, faster, and more accessible to Africans everywhere,” he added.

United Bank for Africa is one of the largest employers in the financial sector on the African continent, with 25,000 employees group-wide and serving over 45 million customers globally. Operating in twenty African countries, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, France and the United Arab Emirates, UBA provides retail, commercial and institutional banking services, leading financial inclusion and implementing cutting-edge technology.

Dangote Group on Tuesday announced it has entered a strategic partnership with Honeywell International Inc to support the next phase of expansion of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery.

The company’s Group Chief Branding and Communications Officer, Anthony Chiejina, in a statement, said this collaboration will provide advanced technology and services that will enable the refinery to increase its processing capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2028.

This, according to him, marks a major milestone in their long-term vision to build the world’s largest petroleum refining complex.

Last month, the refinery announced plans to scale up its capacity to 1.4 million bpd from the current 650,000 bpd. The move will take the crude oil processing facility, Africa’s largest refinery and the world’s biggest single-train refinery, the largest in the world, past India’s Jamnagar Refinery, whose capacity stands at 1.2 million bpd.

Chiejina wrote:  Dangote Group is pleased to announce that it has entered a strategic partnership with Honeywell International Inc to support the next phase of expansion of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery.

This collaboration will provide advanced technology and services that will enable the refinery to increase its processing capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2028, marking a major milestone in our long-term vision to build the world’s largest petroleum refining complex.

Through this agreement, Honeywell will supply specialised catalysts, equipment, and process technologies that will allow the refinery to process a broader slate of crude grades efficiently and to further enhance product quality and operational reliability.

Honeywell, a global Fortune 100 industrial and technology company, offers a wide portfolio of solutions across aviation, automotive, industrial automation, and advanced materials. Honeywell’s division UOP has been a technology partner to Dangote since 2017, providing proprietary refining systems, catalyst regeneration equipment, high performance column trays, and heat exchanger technologies that support our best-in-class operations.

Dangote Group is also advancing its petrochemical footprint. As part of the wider collaboration, we are scaling our polypropylene capacity to 2.4 million metric tons annually using Honeywell’s Oleflex technology. Polypropylene is a key industrial material widely used across packaging, manufacturing, and automotive applications.

In addition to refining expansion, Dangote Group is progressing with the next phase of its fertiliser growth plan in Nigeria. We will increase our urea production capacity from 3 million metric tons to 9 million metric tons annually. The existing plant consists of two trains of 1.5 million metric tons each. The expansion will add four additional trains to meet growing demand for high-quality fertiliser across Africa and global markets.

Dangote Group remains fully committed to delivering world-class industrial capacity, strengthening Nigeria’s energy security, and driving sustainable economic growth through long-term investment, innovation, and strategic global partnerships.

• We’ve 150 days PMS stock

• We used Indigenous technical know-how to build this refinery, he reveals

The Vice-President, Dangote Refinery Limited, Mr. Devakumar Edwin has classified the refinery as strategic national asset for the country.

Mr. Edwin who made the statement during a tour of the oil facility located at the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos, by editors of several media organizations across Nigeria, added that it has a strategic reserve of 150 days Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) stock.
He noted that aside being the second largest employer of labour in Nigeria after the government, the company has created indigenous petroleum engineers, contributes immensely to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and gradually transforming Nigeria into the leading global player in the oil services sector.

He explained that with the innovative ideas of Aliko Dangote, President of the Dangote Group, who does not believe that “anything is impossible,” they have created not just the largest refinery in the country, but a key player in the production of fertilizer across the world.

Edwin said: “We have here at the Refinery, 150 days national stock of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS). In case of diesel (AGO), we have more than 150 days stock, for Aviation fuel, we have much more. So what we have in this facility is a strategic national reserve.

“Before we set up this largest single train, the global petroleum refinery has 430,000 barrels per day in the Middle East. But, what we set up here is 50% larger than the hitherto largest refinery.

“In fact, the biggest thing we are more proud of is that a Nigerian company built it. If you go all across the world, to US, to Europe, to Asia, their refineries were built by Shell or Chevron or Exxon Mobil or Total, Bechtel from US, Siphon from Italy, Technip from France, JGC from Japan, Chiyoda, these six companies are the ones who have practically built all the refineries in the world.

“But when it came to our company, we went and talked to the three of them, they all said, okay, you are talking about 650,000 barrels. The capital cost will be roughly $30,000 a barrel, which means 30,000 into 650,000 is about 19 and a half billion dollars.

“So it’s 20 billion dollar investment. You will need to pay us 15% fees, which is $3 billion. And so my President said, no, let’s go and build it ourselves. We told him, you see companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, Chevron they have never tried it. And you want us to do this? It’s almost impossible.

“Then he said, Edwin, have you forgotten? You know he has a plaque on his table which says ‘nothing is impossible’. Have you forgotten what I keep on my table? So he said, nothing is impossible. Let’s just go and do it.

“And that is how we built this refinery. Dangote Projects limited built this refinery. Nigerians can be proud of that.

“A Nigerian company attempted and built the world’s largest single train refinery. And now we can see the value addition which is creating in.

“The Dangote Refinery has become a game changer for Nigeria and its economy. The refinery has helpped stabilized the nation’s economy.

“You can see we are exporting our jet fuel primarily to Europe. Our gasoline has gone to us, our diesel is going to Europe. So it’s not only consistent supply of fuel but also high quality fuel.

“And then if you see the prices of fuel last year after the subsidy was removed, it was going up, stabilized at a level.

“You can go and check at what price it was selling and at what price it is selling today. I have been in Nigeria for 34 years. I have not seen even the price of stationary paper or a pure water coming down.

“And we have seen for the first-time fuel prices coming down. So we have not added value only in terms of quality and consistency of supply, but in terms of pricing.

“And, you can see the global impact of the price of the refinery. You can see how the currency values have been stable or sometimes even becoming stronger because instead of importing huge quantities of finished petroleum products, now you are having locally available products and we are also exporting products. So, we are also generating foreign, foreign exchange. So there is a net benefit to the country.

“This is a huge forex outflow. Now there is inflow and also outflow is reduced. In fact, if we continue to go in this direction strongly, the currency will even continue to become better. So, the refinery has been able to contribute in a large way”.

Aside being in oil and gas, the factory also has constructed a huge 300 million metric tonnes per annum Urea (fertilizer) plant and is currently developing additional 600 million metric tonnes plant beside the existing plant envisaging that nobody will feed feed Nigeria in due course in spite of population growth.

“What this means,” he said, “is that more Nigerians can go into commercial farming with available fertilizer at affordable price.

Equally speaking while taking the editors round the project site l, Engr. Osunsakin Adelani, a pioneer engineer at the plant, said the current gantry at Dangote Refinery can load 707 trucks of PMS within an hour.

“We have global best laboratories where everything we do here, at every stage of the production, are first tested for quality control before the completion of production. And we have the capacity to monitor every single live feed from every point in the refinery”.

He also said that the refinery is standing on 75 per cent swamp.l, of which 65 million cubic meters of sand was pumped from the Atlantic Ocean to reclaim the land to natural settlement.

“We did surveys which made us drive 250,000 pauch and colon of 62 meters, importing crude oil from Nigeria, US, Angola, and other countries that have the type of crude we require,’ and these is because, Nigeria is not producing enough crude to satisfy the refinery’s need.

To overcome the high cost of constructing the refinery from the so-called global best refinery construction engineering firms, “we set up a construction company to construct the roads here and to construct the refinery,” he added.