South Africa’s Shoprite Holdings, Africa’s biggest retailer by sales, will open nearly twice as many stores on the rest of the continent this year as in 2014, chief executive Whitey Basson said on Tuesday.
The supermarket operator is banking on rapid growth in markets such as Nigeria and Angola where it aims to change the shopping habits of Africa’s rising middle class.
It plans to add another 35 stores this year to the 189 it has in the rest of Africa, hoping to improve on the 16 percent contribution that Africa ex-South Africa makes to its profits. Last year it opened 20 stores outside South Africa.
Nigeria will get 14 new stores in the next 20 months and Shoprite is building a distribution centre there, aiming to move goods faster as imports into Nigeria can be delayed in ports for up to three months or so, Basson said.
Shoprite currently has about 12 stores in Nigeria as such its planned increase will more than double its presence in Nigeria
The company also reported a 19.7% growth in sales in Nigeria for the year ended June 2015, despite a tough one year for many Nigerians.
The Group’s 189 supermarkets outside South Africa, 23 of them new, grew turnover by 13.5% in rand terms and by 15.5% in constant currencies in an environment of lower oil revenues and the weakening of certain African currencies against the rand.
