East Africa's Petroleum Imports Go Overwhelmingly to Transport, Not Electricity

NAIROBI — East Africa's petroleum problem is often described simply as an energy problem. The data show something considerably more specific: the region imports petroleum overwhelmingly to keep transport moving, industry is the second major user, and electricity generation is a significant but much smaller and highly uneven destination depending on the country. East Africa is not primarily importing petroleum to generate electricity. It is importing it to move economies. But before presenting that data country by country, it's worth being explicit about how solid the ground underneath these numbers actually is, because the institution producing them has published its own honest account of where it isn't. How Reliable Is the Underlying Data, According to AFREC Itself? AFREC's 2026-2031 Strategy for the Improvement and Harmonization of Energy Statistics in Africa is, in effect, the source institution grading its own homework, and it's worth reading before treating any of the figures below as settled fact. The document's Figure 3 sorts African countries' 2022 energy balance submissions into six tiers: Good, Good but partial data, Partial data, Submitted in a different format, Estimated by AFREC, and No data. The strategy states directly that "only Algeria, Côte d'Ivoire and Malawi submitted three complete questionnaires, and no country provided the full complement of four questionnaires," meaning that among the eight East African economies examined in this piece, none achieved full data completeness in AFREC's own most recent internal accounting. That doesn't mean the figures below are wrong. AFREC's data remains the most comparable cross-country petroleum dataset available for the region, and the country-level tables that follow are internally consistent, each country's sector breakdown sums correctly to its stated total, which is itself a reasonable, if partial, quality check. But a decimal-precise figure like Kenya's 3,733.98 ktoe of transport petroleum consumption shouldn't be read as more certain than the submission process that produced it actually was. Two specific caveats from AFREC's own strategy document matter enough to flag before the country tables, rather than after. Why Does the DRC's Data Deserve Extra Caution Specifically? AFREC's strategy document addresses the DRC by name, and the language is unusually direct for a technical statistics report: "The chart below shows the various IO's [International Organisations'] estimates of several flows for the DRC. These estimates show considerable differences, especially in biomass, and hence the total energy supply and total consumption for DRC will differ considerably among International Organisations." The document goes on to argue that if the DRC itself built the capacity to produce these estimates domestically, "the DRC would have better energy data and the International Organisations would have the same figures," an explicit acknowledgment that the current DRC figures circulating across different institutions, AFREC, the IEA, the UN, do not currently agree with each other. That matters directly for this piece's DRC section, which describes the country as East Africa's clearest industrial petroleum exception, the only economy in the comparison where industry (51.5%) outconsumes transport (46.6%). That finding is analytically interesting and worth keeping. But readers should treat the DRC's specific decimal figures, 1,463.06 ktoe of crude production, 1,503.90 ktoe of oil product imports, 720.39 ktoe of industrial petroleum consumption, as carrying a meaningfully wider error band than the equivalent Kenya, Tanzania or Ethiopia figures, precisely because AFREC's own strategy document says so about this specific country. Does This Change Anything About Excluding Somalia? No, and AFREC's strategy document independently confirms the original decision was correct. This piece already excluded Somalia from the country-by-country petroleum tables because its energy statistics don't provide a sufficiently comparable petroleum flow breakdown. AFREC's own 2026-2031 strategy document names Somalia directly, alongside Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Mauritania, in its discussion of countries with the weakest energy data submission records continent-wide. That's independent, primary-source confirmation from the data-producing institution itself that Somalia's gap in this analysis reflects a genuine, acknowledged data limitation rather than an oversight in how this piece was assembled. What Does the Regional Total Actually Show? With those caveats stated plainly, the most comparable regional evidence comes from AFREC's 2024 Energy Balance, which provides country-level energy flows covering production, imports, exports, transformation and final consumption. For the seven EAC countries with a directly comparable petroleum balance in the 2022 dataset used here, final petroleum consumption totalled approximately 13,999 ktoe. Regional final petroleum consumption, 2022 (7 comparable EAC economies)ktoeShare Transport9,41267.2%Industry2,25216.1%Commercial and public services1,1208.0%Households5964.3%Agriculture4012.9%Non-energy uses1971.4%Total final consumption13,999100%Memo: Electricity generation (transformation input, not final consumption)728—Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. The first conclusion is straightforward: transport is East Africa's petroleum economy. But that regional average conceals enormous differences between countries, which the country-by-country tables below lay out in full, alongside the reliability caveats already noted for the DRC. How Does Kenya's Petroleum Demand Actually Break Down? Kenya's 2022 AFREC balance recorded 5,113.57 ktoe of oil product imports, alongside 183.89 ktoe entering electricity plants, 659.37 ktoe in international aviation bunkers, 52.60 ktoe in international marine bunkers, 54.64 ktoe of oil exports, and a 1,505.41 ktoe stock draw. Final oil consumption was 5,664.36 ktoe. Kenya petroleum use, 2022ktoeShare Transport3,733.9865.9%Commercial and public services978.7417.3%Households406.277.2%Industry253.844.5%Agriculture, forestry and fishing161.032.8%Non-energy use111.982.0%Non-specified18.520.3%Total5,664.36100%Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. Kenya's more recent national data tell the same broad story from another angle. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, domestic petroleum demand reached 5.1994 million tonnes in 2024. Kenya domestic petroleum demand by product, 2024Million tonnesShare Light diesel oil2.208442.5%Motor gasoline1.492628.7%Jet and turbo fuel0.735514.1%LPG0.41498.0%Fuel oil0.30925.9%Illuminating kerosene0.03670.7%Total5.1994100%Memo: Net petroleum fuel imports4.2806—Source: Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. Light diesel and motor gasoline together represented 71.2% of Kenya's domestic petroleum demand. Kenya's electricity system also demonstrates directly why petroleum shouldn't be equated with power generation. Kenya electricity generation by source, 2024GWhShare Geothermal5,55139.4%Hydro3,63125.7%Electricity imports1,53310.9%Wind1,79812.7%Thermal generation1,1308.0%Solar4603.3%Total generated + imported14,103 + 1,533100%Source: Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. Kenya therefore imports enormous quantities of petroleum without depending on petroleum as the principal foundation of its electricity system. Why Is Tanzania's Fuel Bill Overwhelmingly a Transport Bill? Tanzania imported 4,014.30 ktoe of oil products in the 2022 AFREC balance. International aviation bunkers accounted for 150.0 ktoe, while 192.5 ktoe of petroleum entered electricity plants. Final oil consumption reached 3,687.2 ktoe. Tanzania petroleum use, 2022ktoeShare Transport2,674.9072.5%Industry771.0020.9%Households101.502.8%Commercial and public services90.402.5%Non-energy use49.401.3%Total3,687.20100%Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. Tanzania therefore has one of the clearest transport-dominated petroleum markets in the region, with almost three-quarters of final consumption going to transport. But it also has an unusually large industrial petroleum market, 771.0 ktoe, more than the entire petroleum consumption of several smaller East African economies combined. Tanzania electricity generation fuel inputs, 2022ktoe Natural gas (into electricity generation)1,532.2Petroleum products (into electricity plants)192.5Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. Petroleum is therefore part of Tanzania's electricity system, but it is not the dominant fossil energy input to power generation, a distinction that matters whenever fuel imports are discussed as though every imported barrel competes directly with electricity generation. Is Ethiopia's Fuel Problem Really Just a Transport Problem? Ethiopia presents one of the clearest cases in the entire region. The 2022 AFREC balance recorded 4,721.01 ktoe of oil product imports and 4,054.58 ktoe of final oil consumption. Ethiopia petroleum use, 2022 (AFREC)ktoeShare Transport3,616.3089.2%Industry332.608.2%Households105.682.6%Total4,054.58100%Memo: Electricity plants0—Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. Ethiopia's newer national energy balance makes the picture even clearer. Ethiopia petroleum imports, 2023/24ktoe Light petroleum products2,074Heavy petroleum products2,550Other petroleum products230LPG and refinery gas11Total petroleum imports4,865Final petroleum consumption (after stock/other flows)~4,860Source: Ethiopia national energy balance, 2023/24. Ethiopia petroleum use, 2023/24 (national balance)ktoeShare Transport4,36589.8%Industry and construction3717.6%Households1242.6%Total final petroleum4,860100%Source: Ethiopia national energy balance, 2023/24. Ethiopia transport petroleum breakdown, 2023/24ktoeShare of transport energy Road transport3,26174.5%Aviation1,10425.2%Rail (electricity, not petroleum)0 (4 ktoe electricity)—Total transport energy4,378100%Source: Ethiopia national energy balance, 2023/24. Road transport alone accounted for about 67.1% of Ethiopia's total final petroleum consumption, while aviation represented another 22.7%. The Ethiopian data provide an unusually clear answer to what the country's petroleum imports are actually doing: overwhelmingly moving the economy, not generating electricity. Ethiopia's 2023/24 balance records only 4 ktoe of electricity consumption associated with power plants and no light or heavy petroleum products entering those plants at all, meaning electricity generation is structurally separate from Ethiopia's petroleum import problem entirely. Does Uganda's Fuel Demand Look Different From Ethiopia's? Uganda imported 1,964.51 ktoe of oil products in 2022, with final petroleum consumption reaching 1,865.38 ktoe and no petroleum recorded entering electricity plants. Uganda petroleum use, 2022ktoeShare Transport1,251.0067.1%Industry391.1921.0%Agriculture, forestry and fishing177.559.5%Households31.481.7%Commercial and public services14.160.8%Total1,865.38100%Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. Uganda has a more diversified petroleum economy than Ethiopia. Transport remains dominant, but industry absorbs more than a fifth of final consumption, and agriculture is meaningfully significant. This is where the phrase "fuel for vehicles" becomes too narrow: agricultural machinery, irrigation equipment and related energy uses can appear within agricultural energy statistics, though the AFREC table doesn't allow the 177.55 ktoe to be described entirely as tractor or machinery fuel. The data support agriculture as a meaningful petroleum-consuming sector. They do not support a more precise machinery-specific percentage. Why Is the DRC East Africa's Industrial Exception, With That Reliability Caveat in Mind? The Democratic Republic of the Congo most clearly breaks the regional pattern. It imported 1,503.90 ktoe of oil products in 2022, but also produced 1,463.06 ktoe of crude oil, with 848.67 ktoe of that crude entering refinery transformation and 316.25 ktoe of oil products emerging from the refining process. DRC crude and refining flows, 2022ktoe Crude oil produced1,463.06Crude entering refinery transformation848.67Oil products emerging from refinery316.25Oil product imports1,503.90Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. Note: AFREC's own 2026-2031 data strategy document states that international organisations' estimates of DRC energy flows "show considerable differences, especially in biomass," meaning these figures should be treated as the best available comparable estimate rather than a fully reconciled national figure. This demonstrates the critical difference between crude oil production and refined petroleum supply: a country can produce crude and still import refined petroleum products. DRC petroleum use, 2022ktoeShare Industry720.3951.5%Transport651.9746.6%Households16.941.2%Non-energy9.410.7%Total1,398.70100%Memo: Electricity plants92.61—Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. The DRC is the only country in this comparable group where industry consumes more petroleum than transport, a major structural difference and, given the caveat above, the single finding in this entire comparison most worth treating as directionally reliable rather than numerically precise. Its industrial petroleum consumption is consistent with the importance of mining and other industrial activity, but the AFREC balance doesn't separately identify how much of that 720.39 ktoe went specifically to mining machinery, a distinction that must not be invented from data that doesn't support it, and that carries additional uncertainty given AFREC's own acknowledgment of cross-source disagreement on DRC energy flows generally. How Diversified Is Rwanda's Petroleum Economy? Rwanda imported 591.75 ktoe of oil products in 2022, also exporting 131.58 ktoe and recording 38.67 ktoe in international aviation bunkers. Petroleum entering electricity plants amounted to 39.65 ktoe, with final oil consumption at 391.10 ktoe. Rwanda petroleum use, 2022ktoeShare Transport233.4159.7%Industry71.9418.4%Commercial and public services30.967.9%Households25.006.4%Non-energy26.356.7%Non-specified3.440.9%Total391.10100%Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. Transport remains the largest user, but Rwanda's petroleum demand is relatively diversified across transport, industry, commercial activity, households and non-energy uses. Its 39.65 ktoe entering electricity plants shows petroleum plays a role in power generation, though the data don't justify treating it as Rwanda's principal electricity source. Is Burundi's Petroleum Profile Really More Industrial Than Expected? Burundi imported 97.24 ktoe of oil products in 2022, with final petroleum consumption at 106.61 ktoe (the difference reflecting stock and other balance adjustments) and 4.70 ktoe in international aviation bunkers. Burundi petroleum use, 2022ktoeShare Transport68.3664.1%Industry32.3930.4%Households4.384.1%Commercial and public services1.481.4%Agriculture00%Total106.61100%Memo: Electricity plants0—Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. Burundi's petroleum economy is almost entirely divided between transport and industry, with transport taking the larger share. The 30.4% industrial share is notable precisely because Burundi's total petroleum market is small, even a small petroleum economy can carry a substantial industrial demand share. How Does South Sudan Both Produce Oil and Import Fuel? South Sudan presents the most striking contradiction in the dataset. It produced 8,677.82 ktoe of crude oil in 2022, yet imported 1,114.18 ktoe of oil products, its crude production many times larger than its refined petroleum imports, since crude itself doesn't eliminate the need for refined products. South Sudan crude production vs. refined imports, 2022ktoe Crude oil produced8,677.82Oil product imports1,114.18Oil products entering electricity plants219.53Oil products entering charcoal production plants (separate transformation category)172.86Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. South Sudan petroleum use, 2022ktoeShare Transport798.2190.1%Agriculture, forestry and fishing62.097.0%Industry10.961.2%Households10.211.2%Commercial and public services3.950.4%Non-specified0.31negligibleTotal885.74100%Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. South Sudan combines three genuinely different characteristics simultaneously: it's a major crude oil producer, it imports refined petroleum products, and almost all of its final petroleum consumption goes to transport, while petroleum plays an unusually large role in electricity generation compared with most other countries in the dataset. This is precisely why crude production, refining capacity, fuel imports and electricity generation must be analysed as separate systems rather than one undifferentiated category. Why Can't Somalia Be Given the Same Table, and Is That Confirmed Independently? Somalia is part of the EAC, but its publicly available energy statistics don't provide a petroleum flow table sufficiently comparable with the AFREC tables used for the other seven countries. That's a data limitation, not a reason to manufacture a number, and it's worth noting this isn't just this analysis's own judgment: AFREC's 2026-2031 strategy document independently names Somalia among the countries with the weakest energy data submission records continent-wide, alongside Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Mauritania. Somalia final energy consumption by source (AFREC)Share Biofuels and waste~90%Oil~9%Electricity~1%Source: AFREC energy balance. Somalia electricity sector contextFigure Installed electricity generation capacity~106 MWPrimary generation source for most power companiesDiesel generatorsSource: Somalia National Bureau of Statistics. The statistics agency states that many Somalis rely on small-scale diesel generators for lighting, alongside solar, kerosene, firewood and other sources; urban households increasingly use electricity and LPG for cooking, while rural and nomadic communities continue relying heavily on firewood and charcoal. What can be established is that diesel is structurally important to Somalia's electricity system. What cannot be responsibly stated from the available comparable data is a specific percentage or quantity of Somalia's petroleum imports going to vehicles, factories, households, agriculture or electricity generation, there is no defensible number in the sources reviewed that allows that allocation, and AFREC's own institutional self-assessment confirms this is a genuine, acknowledged gap rather than an analytical shortcut. How Do All Eight Economies Compare Side by Side? CountryFinal petroleum consumption, ktoeTransport, ktoeTransport shareIndustry, ktoeIndustry shareElectricity plants, ktoe Burundi106.6168.3664.1%32.3930.4%0DRC*1,398.70651.9746.6%720.3951.5%92.61Kenya5,664.363,733.9865.9%253.844.5%183.89Rwanda391.10233.4159.7%71.9418.4%39.65South Sudan885.74798.2190.1%10.961.2%219.53Tanzania3,687.202,674.9072.5%771.0020.9%192.50Uganda1,865.381,251.0067.1%391.1921.0%0Ethiopia (2022 AFREC)4,054.583,616.3089.2%332.608.2%0*Note: Ethiopia's figures are the 2022 AFREC balance, used here to maintain comparability with the other EAC figures. Ethiopia's newer 2023/24 national balance records 4,860 ktoe of final petroleum consumption, of which 4,365 ktoe (89.8%) went to transport and 371 ktoe (7.6%) to industry and construction. DRC figures carry a wider uncertainty band than the other seven countries; see caveat above. Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year; Ethiopia national energy balance, 2023/24; AFREC 2026-2031 Data Strategy. The pattern is striking. The DRC is the industrial outlier, with the caveat that its precision is the weakest of the eight. South Sudan and Ethiopia are the transport outliers. Tanzania has both a very large transport market and a substantial industrial petroleum market. Kenya has the region's largest petroleum market in absolute terms among the comparable countries, distributed across transport, commercial activity, aviation, households, industry and agriculture. Uganda's agriculture sector consumes considerably more petroleum than Tanzania's or Ethiopia's recorded agriculture category. Rwanda has a smaller but relatively diversified petroleum economy. Burundi has a small petroleum market with a surprisingly high industrial share. Somalia has a fundamentally different electricity structure, but the available data, and AFREC's own acknowledgment of the gap, don't permit a comparable sector-by-sector petroleum allocation. Is Petroleum Actually East Africa's Dominant Energy Source Overall? No, and this is worth stating clearly because it's easy to read a petroleum-focused analysis and assume petroleum dominates the region's total energy picture. It doesn't. AFREC's Key Africa Energy Statistics 2025 report includes a regional chart, "Eastern Africa Total Final Consumption by Sector," covering all fuels combined, not petroleum specifically, from 2010 through 2023. That chart shows total final energy consumption rising from roughly 65,000-70,000 ktoe in 2010 to more than 120,000 ktoe by 2023, and across that entire period, households consistently represent the largest single sector, driven overwhelmingly by biomass, firewood and charcoal used for cooking, accounting for roughly 50-60% of the regional total in most years shown. Transport, by contrast, appears as a considerably smaller band on the same chart, growing steadily but remaining well behind households across the full 13-year period. That's not a contradiction of the petroleum-specific findings above. It's a genuinely important complementary point: petroleum flows overwhelmingly to transport, but petroleum itself is not the dominant fuel in East Africa's total energy economy at all. Biomass is, because households across the region still cook predominantly with wood and charcoal rather than oil-based fuels. This piece's Ethiopia section already showed this at the country level, 37,764 ktoe of household biomass consumption dwarfing just 124 ktoe of household petroleum use, and AFREC's regional chart confirms the same pattern holds across Eastern Africa as a whole, not just in Ethiopia specifically. Has Africa's Energy Import Mix Actually Shifted Over the Past Decade? Yes, at the continental level, and the direction is relevant to everything above. AFREC's Key Africa Energy Statistics 2025 report shows Africa's total energy imports rising from 118.9 Mtoe in 2010 to 194.9 Mtoe in 2023. Africa total energy imports by fuel share20102023 Oil products54%70%Crude oil30%15%Natural gas5%5%Coal4%7%Electricity3%2%Charcoal4%not separately reported at this shareTotal imports118.9 Mtoe194.9 MtoeSource: AFREC Key Africa Energy Statistics 2025, Section 1.4. The shift from crude to refined product imports is directly relevant to the DRC and South Sudan sections above: a continent producing more of its own crude but importing proportionally more refined product suggests refining capacity, not raw crude access, has become the more binding constraint across Africa broadly over this period, exactly the structural point this piece already makes about the DRC and South Sudan specifically. Where Does the Region's Petroleum Actually Go for Vehicles Specifically? If the question is where the largest share of petroleum goes, the answer is vehicles and transport systems, though even here the data require care. Transport includes road transport, aviation and, where applicable, marine and rail activity, it does not mean every tonne recorded under transport was burned by a private car. Ethiopia transport fuel split, 2023/24ktoe Road transport3,261Aviation1,104Source: Ethiopia national energy balance, 2023/24. Kenya product demand, 2024Million tonnesShare of total demand Diesel2.208442.5%Motor gasoline1.492628.7%Jet and turbo fuel0.735514.1%Diesel + gasoline combined3.701071.2%Source: Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2024. This is why petroleum prices have such a broad economic effect across East Africa: fuel is embedded in the movement of almost everything, food, construction materials, manufactured goods, mining inputs, workers, and export commodities all move by road, while aircraft connect the region to external markets. The petroleum bill is therefore not merely a household transport expense. It is an economy-wide logistics cost. What About Industrial Machinery Specifically? This is where analysts must resist creating a category the data don't actually provide. There is no single AFREC category called "machinery fuel." A tractor can fall within agricultural energy consumption. Industrial machinery can appear under industry. A mining vehicle can be classified according to the statistical treatment of the mining activity or the transport activity. A generator serving a factory may be recorded differently from fuel entering a central electricity plant. CountryAgriculture, forestry and fishing petroleum use, 2022 (ktoe) Uganda177.55Kenya161.03South Sudan62.09Burundi0 (not recorded in this category)Rwanda0 (not recorded in this category)Tanzania0 (not recorded in this category)Ethiopia (2023/24)0 (not recorded in this category)Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year; Ethiopia national energy balance, 2023/24. Those figures should not be rewritten as "fuel used by tractors," because the underlying statistical category is broader. Likewise, the DRC's 720.39 ktoe of industrial petroleum consumption should not be presented as "mining fuel" without a separate mining energy survey, and, given AFREC's own caution about DRC estimates generally, should be treated with additional care regardless. The correct, defensible conclusion is that industry is a major petroleum-consuming sector across several of these economies, but existing regional energy balances do not allow all industrial petroleum to be assigned to machinery, mining or manufacturing individually. Is East Africa's Petroleum Story Really an Electricity Story? This may be the biggest misconception the data expose directly. CountryOil products entering electricity plants, 2022 (ktoe) South Sudan219.53Tanzania192.50Kenya183.89DRC92.61Rwanda39.65Burundi0Uganda0Ethiopia0Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. That's an important finding because it changes how East Africa's petroleum dependence should actually be understood. The region does not have one unified petroleum economy: South Sudan uses oil significantly for power; Tanzania uses oil for power but with a much larger natural gas contribution; Kenya uses petroleum for power generation but its electricity system is dominated by geothermal, hydro, wind and other sources; Ethiopia's electricity system is overwhelmingly separate from petroleum entirely; Uganda's 2022 AFREC balance records no petroleum entering electricity plants at all; and Somalia is different again because private electricity systems rely heavily on diesel generators, though a directly comparable national petroleum allocation isn't available. Is the Household Petroleum Story Smaller Than Most People Assume? Households are not the principal petroleum market in most of these countries. CountryHousehold petroleum consumption, 2022 (ktoe) Kenya406.27Ethiopia (2023/24: light petroleum products only)113 (plus 11 ktoe LPG/refinery gas)Tanzania101.50Rwanda25.00Uganda31.48DRC16.94South Sudan10.21Burundi4.38Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year; Ethiopia national energy balance, 2023/24. Kenya stands out by absolute household petroleum consumption, while Tanzania and Ethiopia are the next largest among the countries compared. Ethiopia's household energy remains overwhelmingly dominated by biomass, with 37,764 ktoe of primary biomass recorded in household final consumption, dwarfing its petroleum household use by a wide margin, a pattern the regional Eastern Africa total-energy chart above confirms holds true across the wider region, not just in Ethiopia. Somalia again differs because diesel generators form an important part of household electricity and lighting systems there. Why Is the Fuel Import Bill Really a Logistics Bill? The numbers reveal something larger than the petroleum market itself. East Africa's dependence on imported petroleum is fundamentally connected to the geography of production and consumption: the region produces agricultural commodities far from ports, factories need inputs transported across borders, mining operations require heavy equipment and supplies, construction requires cement, steel, machinery and workers to move, cities are expanding faster than many public transport systems, landlocked economies depend on long road corridors to reach ports, and air travel connects increasingly integrated regional economies. Every one of these activities consumes transport energy directly or indirectly, which is why a fuel price increase doesn't remain at the filling station. It moves through freight rates, food prices, construction costs, manufacturing costs, airfares and household expenditure simultaneously. The composition of petroleum consumption tells us something structural about East Africa's economies: the region has not yet decoupled economic expansion from petroleum-powered mobility. Does Owning Crude Oil Actually Solve This Problem? The DRC and South Sudan demonstrate directly that petroleum dependence cannot be solved merely by possessing crude oil underground, though as established above, the DRC's specific figures here carry the widest uncertainty band in this comparison. CountryCrude oil produced, 2022 (ktoe)Refined oil products imported, 2022 (ktoe) South Sudan8,677.821,114.18DRC*1,463.06 (of which 848.67 refined, yielding 316.25 in products)1,503.90*Source: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year. DRC figures carry additional uncertainty per AFREC's own data strategy document. The lesson is structural: crude oil production is one part of the petroleum system, refining is another, storage another, transportation another, distribution another, and final consumption yet another. A country can therefore be rich in crude resources while remaining dependent on imported refined fuels, a crucial distinction for African industrial policy that raw production figures alone can obscure entirely, and one the continental import-mix shift toward refined products (54% to 70% of Africa's import basket since 2010) reinforces at scale. Where Does East Africa's Petroleum Future Actually Get Decided? The numbers suggest the largest opportunity for reducing petroleum dependence doesn't sit exclusively inside power generation. It sits in transport. If roughly two-thirds of final petroleum consumption across the comparable EAC economies is associated with transport, then the economics of electric mobility, rail freight, mass transit, logistics efficiency and urban planning become central to the region's future petroleum demand. But electrification alone isn't enough: a truck carrying cargo from a Tanzanian factory to Zambia, Rwanda or the DRC represents a genuinely different energy challenge from a private passenger car in Dar es Salaam or Nairobi, a bus carrying hundreds of passengers is different from hundreds of individual cars, rail freight is different from long-distance diesel trucking, and an electric motorcycle is different from an electric private vehicle. The question is therefore not simply whether East Africa can replace petrol and diesel with electricity. The deeper question is whether East Africa can move more people and more goods while using less petroleum per unit of economic output, a genuine economic productivity question rather than a purely technological one. What Are the Numbers That Actually Matter Most for Policy? For policymakers and investors, the most important figures aren't simply the import totals. They're the destination figures, read alongside how confident AFREC's own institutional review says we should be in each one. CountryOil product imports, 2022 (ktoe)Largest single-sector consumption, 2022 (ktoe)That sectorData confidence note Kenya5,113.573,733.98TransportStandardTanzania4,014.302,674.90TransportStandardEthiopia (2022 AFREC)4,721.013,616.30TransportStandard; corroborated by newer 2023/24 national balanceUganda1,964.511,251.00TransportStandardDRC1,503.90720.39IndustryWider uncertainty per AFREC's own data strategySouth Sudan1,114.18798.21TransportStandardRwanda591.75233.41TransportStandardBurundi97.2468.36TransportStandardSource: AFREC 2024 Energy Balance, 2022 data year; AFREC 2026-2031 Data Strategy. Ethiopia's newer 2023/24 national balance separately records 4,865 ktoe of petroleum imports and 4,365 ktoe of petroleum transport consumption. Kenya's newer 2024 national data record 5.1994 million tonnes of domestic petroleum demand and 4.2806 million tonnes of net petroleum fuel imports. These are not merely energy statistics. They are a map of how East African economies physically function, with one entry on that map, the DRC's, drawn in a slightly less certain hand than the rest. What's the Real Question Behind These Numbers? The more consequential question is not how much fuel East Africa imports. It's what the region gets in return for every tonne of petroleum it imports. If fuel is moving food, machinery, manufactured goods and export commodities, petroleum is functioning as an input into production and trade. If it's moving workers through increasingly congested cities, it's part of the cost of urbanisation. If it's powering industrial equipment, it's an input into manufacturing. If it's generating electricity where grids are weak, it's compensating for an infrastructure deficit. If it's being burned inefficiently in old vehicles and generators, it represents an economic loss that higher fuel prices simply expose more clearly. The data reveal two genuinely different East African petroleum problems that shouldn't be conflated. One is dependence: the region relies heavily on imported petroleum. The other is productivity: too much economic activity still requires petroleum-powered movement to function at all. Those are not the same problem, and they don't have the same solution. A country can reduce its petroleum imports simply because its economy is shrinking, which is not progress by any reasonable measure. It can also reduce petroleum intensity while its economy grows, because each unit of output requires less imported fuel to produce, and that second transition is the one that actually matters. East Africa does not simply need less fuel. It needs an economy capable of producing, transporting and trading more value with less imported petroleum per unit of economic activity, and better data, the kind AFREC's own 2026-2031 strategy is explicitly trying to build, will be part of how the region actually knows whether it's making that transition or merely assuming it. FAQ Where does most of East Africa's imported petroleum actually go? Transport, accounting for 67.2% of final petroleum consumption across the seven directly comparable EAC economies in the 2022 AFREC data, with industry a distant second at 16.1%. How reliable is this data, according to the source institution itself? AFREC's own 2026-2031 data strategy document states that only Algeria, Côte d'Ivoire and Malawi submitted its full questionnaire suite completely in the most recent review, none of the eight countries in this comparison among them, and separately flags the DRC specifically as a country where different international organisations' estimates "show considerable differences." Which country has the most industrial petroleum profile in the region? The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the only country in this comparison where industry (51.5%) consumes more petroleum than transport (46.6%), though this specific finding carries a wider uncertainty band than the other seven countries per AFREC's own data-quality assessment. Is petroleum actually East Africa's dominant overall energy source? No. A separate AFREC regional chart covering all fuels shows Eastern Africa's total final energy consumption dominated by households, driven by biomass, firewood and charcoal for cooking, at roughly 50-60% of the regional total, with transport a considerably smaller share of total energy use even though it dominates petroleum specifically. Why can't Somalia be included in the same comparison table as the other EAC members? Somalia's publicly available energy statistics don't provide a petroleum flow table directly comparable to the AFREC data used for the other seven countries, a data limitation AFREC's own strategy document independently confirms by naming Somalia among the countries with the weakest data submission records continent-wide. Has Africa's energy import composition changed over time? Yes. Africa's total energy imports rose from 118.9 Mtoe in 2010 to 194.9 Mtoe in 2023, with oil products' share of that basket rising from 54% to 70% as crude oil's share fell from 30% to 15%, reflecting a shift toward importing refined product rather than raw crude. What's the actual policy implication of this data? That reducing East Africa's petroleum dependence is primarily a transport and logistics challenge, electric mobility, rail freight, mass transit and urban planning, rather than primarily an electricity generation challenge, and that improving the underlying data itself, an explicit priority in AFREC's own 2026-2031 strategy, will be necessary before some of these country-level findings, particularly the DRC's, can be stated with full confidence.