Nigerian tycoon Tope Shonubi's Sahara supplies six months of fuel to Madagascar's power stations

The Malagasy state bought fuel from a foreign supplier itself for the first time in nearly three decades on Aug. 12, and the seller was a Nigerian company.

The tanker Sunda 1 docked at Toamasina, Madagascar's main port, carrying 67 million litres of diesel negotiated with Sahara Group, the Lagos energy conglomerate Tope Shonubi co-founded in 1996. All of it is reserved for JIRAMA, the state-owned company that supplies Madagascar's water and electricity, and it covers roughly six months of what the utility burns in its power stations. Vessel tracking data compiled by Bloomberg shows the ship sailed from the Qinglanshan Oil Terminal in China.

Madagascar has always imported its fuel. What changed is who does the buying.

Since 1999, four private distributors have handled it on the country's behalf through a body called the Groupement Pétrolier de Madagascar, or GPM, an industry grouping rather than a company. Its members are the local arms of TotalEnergies, Vitol, Rubis Énergie and the Malagasy conglomerate Axian, trading as TotalEnergies, Vivo Energy, Galana and Jovena. Every import tender ran through them for 27 years.

President Michaël Randrianirina presented the Sunda 1 as a break with that. He said previous leaders had not dared to import directly, that Madagascar had always depended on those partners, and that he was not saying the partners were bad.

The legal change came on July 1, when the National Assembly passed Law No. 021/2026, handing responsibility for importing JIRAMA's fuel to State Procurement of Madagascar, a government purchasing agency created in 2019. The Constitutional Court upheld the law on Aug. 3. The Sunda 1 was the first cargo bought under it.

Landing that cargo required taking a competitor's property.

Madagascar has one oil storage facility, the Galana tank farm at Toamasina, owned by Rubis Énergie, one of the four distributors the reform displaced. The government issued a decree requisitioning it so the state cargo could be pumped ashore.

GPM had a tanker of its own arriving at almost the same time. The Torm Eva, Danish-flagged and carrying about 71,000 tonnes of diesel, gasoline and kerosene loaded in the Persian Gulf, was left waiting offshore with nowhere to discharge. In a note to customers on Aug. 11, GPM said the requisition made it impossible to unload the vessel chartered under its supply programme, and warned that delays could hold up the replenishment of stocks for ordinary motorists and businesses.

Madagascar uses about a million tonnes of petroleum products a year, so the Torm Eva alone carries roughly 7% of the country's annual supply.

Randrianirina questioned why there would be any disruption, and said an agreement needed to be reached and the situation resolved calmly. His government maintains both cargoes can be handled, arguing that because the Sunda 1 diesel is ring-fenced for JIRAMA it will never enter commercial distribution. Options under discussion include alternating the unloading or moving some of the utility's fuel to other tanks.

Sahara is a logical seller for a government trying to move quickly. The company operates in more than 40 countries and runs the largest privately owned vertically integrated power business in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa, meaning it both generates electricity and distributes it. Its assets include Egbin Power, Nigeria's largest power station, along with Ikeja Electric and First Independent Power, alongside a fuel trading arm.

Shonubi founded it with Tonye Cole and Ade Odunsi. He was educated at King's College Lagos, the University of Lagos and Middlesex University in Britain, and served as a special assistant on international and youth affairs to President Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2003. He is a director of Asharami Energy, Sahara's oil exploration and production arm, and has overseen investments in gas carriers, storage terminals and power generation.

The crisis that pushed Madagascar into buying its own fuel began earlier this year. The government reactivated its energy state of emergency on July 17 as global petroleum supplies came under pressure from conflict in the Middle East, and months of shortages had left JIRAMA's power stations vulnerable to running dry.

The displaced distributors have raised a separate concern about what replaces them. In a position seen by Bloomberg, GPM members warned that a state importer could end up buying from suppliers subject to international sanctions, creating legal and commercial risk for the distributors, logistics firms and customers handling that fuel afterwards. Madagascar has deepened its ties with Russia since last year's military coup.

Both systems still depend on the same single port and the same single storage facility, which the reform has not addressed. Two more tankers are expected at Toamasina before November.