For decades, East Africa has talked about the transformative promise of oil. Now, after years of delays, court battles, political negotiations and infrastructure disputes, that promise is finally approaching reality.
Uganda is preparing to become an oil exporter, with its first commercial cargo of Pearl Sweet crude expected by the end of 2026, potentially loading in December. Production from the Tilenga and Kingfisher fields is expected eventually to reach about 230,000 barrels per day.
But Uganda’s oil story is actually a regional story.
Its crude will travel through Tanzania via the 1,443-kilometre East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) to the export terminal near Tanga. The pipeline has a peak capacity of roughly 246,000 barrels per day and is nearing completion.
That makes Tanzania much more than a transit country.
It could become East Africa’s energy gateway.
And this is where the region faces a fascinating opportunity — and a familiar danger.
Infrastructure without integration
East Africa has historically been very good at building infrastructure that stops just short of becoming a genuinely integrated economic system.
Uganda produces crude. Tanzania provides the export route and port infrastructure. Kenya has the region’s largest economy and an enormous fuel market. South Sudan has oil. The Democratic Republic of Congo has huge mineral and energy potential.
Yet these assets have often been developed as competing national projects rather than pieces of one regional industrial strategy.
That may finally be changing.
Uganda and Tanzania signed an agreement in August to develop a Tanga Regional Energy Hub, potentially attracting more than $20 billion in investment in refining, storage, logistics, trading and petroleum infrastructure. The proposed system includes multi-product pipelines and a refinery, alongside the existing EACOP infrastructure.
This is precisely the kind of thinking East Africa has lacked.
The objective should not simply be to pump Ugandan crude to the coast and put it on a ship.
It should be to build an energy economy around that pipeline.
The missed opportunity
For years, East Africa has imported enormous quantities of refined petroleum products despite possessing crude resources.
That is the absurdity at the centre of the region’s energy story.
Uganda can potentially produce hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude a day, yet the region remains heavily dependent on imported fuel.
Some of the opportunity was lost through delays, competing refinery plans and disagreements over routes.
Kenya once pursued its own refinery ambitions at Mombasa before the old refinery was effectively mothballed. Now Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote is proposing a massive 700,000-barrel-per-day refinery at Lamu, with groundbreaking expected this month and completion targeted around 2030. But the project faces a fundamental problem: Kenya currently has no commercial crude production and would need to secure crude from Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya or international markets.
This is where East Africa risks repeating its old mistake: building impressive assets that compete rather than connect.
Why should Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania each try to build isolated energy systems when they could construct one regional network?
The pipeline could become much more than a pipeline
EACOP should ultimately be viewed as an energy corridor rather than a single oil pipeline.
Ugandan crude can move south to Tanga.
Refined petroleum can move inland.
Storage facilities can be shared.
Gas pipelines can connect producing regions to industrial centres.
Electricity transmission can cross borders.
And ports can become logistics hubs for the entire hinterland.
Uganda and Tanzania are already studying a refined-products pipeline and a natural-gas pipeline, while a 400kV electricity interconnector between the two countries has secured $250 million in World Bank financing.
This is where the economic multiplier becomes interesting.
Oil itself creates revenue.
But refining creates manufacturing.
Petrochemicals create another industry.
Storage creates logistics.
Pipelines create engineering and maintenance businesses.
Energy availability attracts factories.
And reliable electricity creates entirely different opportunities in data centres, manufacturing and digital services.
The real prize is therefore not the barrel.
It is everything built around the barrel.
What about Kenya?
Kenya should not see Uganda’s oil or Tanzania’s infrastructure as a threat.
It should see them as an opportunity.
The proposed Dangote refinery could become one component of a broader East African energy system rather than simply another refinery competing for crude.
President William Ruto has already proposed a regional refinery in Tanga capable of processing crude from Uganda, South Sudan, the DRC and Kenya, with refined products potentially transported through a pipeline towards Mombasa. Dangote has expressed willingness to support such a regional project.
That concept deserves serious consideration — but with one condition.
East African governments must stop treating energy infrastructure as trophies of national prestige.
A refinery in Kenya, a pipeline in Tanzania and oil fields in Uganda are only valuable if they work together.
Can East Africa actually pull this off?
Yes.
But politics may be a bigger obstacle than engineering.
The region has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to build cross-border infrastructure. EACOP itself crosses two countries and involves multiple shareholders. The new Tanga energy-hub partnership shows that governments are beginning to think beyond crude exports.
The next step should be a regional energy master plan linking Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, South Sudan and eventually the DRC.
It should identify where crude is produced, where it can be refined, where fuel is consumed, where storage should be located and which pipelines can be shared.
East Africa should also negotiate common tariffs, streamline customs procedures and create predictable regulations for energy investors.
Otherwise, the region will once again build infrastructure and then fight over who gets to use it.
Uganda’s first oil shipment should therefore be treated as more than a Ugandan milestone.
It should be East Africa’s wake-up call.
The region has crude, ports, pipelines, markets, electricity potential and a population of hundreds of millions.
What it has lacked is coordination.
If East Africa gets that part right, Uganda’s first barrel could become the beginning of something far bigger than an oil-export industry.
It could mark the birth of an integrated East African energy economy.
And that is the opportunity the region cannot afford to miss twice.
