The IPO for the People: Ownership, Marketing, and the Arithmetic of the Poor
In September 2026, the Dangote Petroleum Refinery opened what has been described as Africa's largest public share offering, marketed explicitly as an "IPO for the people." This essay examines the gap between that language and the arithmetic facing the citizen who can least afford to lose money, the person earning close to a dollar a day, for whom the minimum subscription represents days or weeks of income. It argues that democratized access to an instrument is not the same as suitability of that instrument for everyone granted access, and that the language of inclusion, however well-intentioned, can obscure a mismatch between financial products and financial realities. 1. The Language of Inclusion "The offer is open." "Buy a share." The messaging around the Dangote Refinery IPO was built to feel approachable, a minimum subscription of ten shares at ₦525 each, ₦5,250 in total, framed as a threshold low enough for ordinary Nigerians to cross. Aliko Da...