Africa’s Largest Food Retailer Shoprite Has Sold Its Nigerian Operations
Africa’s Largest Food Retailer Shoprite Has Sold Its Nigerian Operations. Shoprite, Africa’s largest food retailer, has sold its Nigerian operations to local investors 16 years after it opened its first outlet in the continent’s most populous country. The company sold its stake to Ketron Investment, a Nigerian company owned by a group of local investors led by property firm Persianas Investment, Ketron said in an emailed statement.
Shoprite is changing its strategy “from an ownership model to a franchise model,” Ketron said. The acquisition has been approved by Nigeria’s federal competition and consumer protection commission. “We look forward to building an even stronger company following our acquisition” Tayo Amusan, Ketron’s chairman told Today NG.
According to Today NG, with the sale, Shoprite becomes the latest South African business to exit the West African nation in the last decade. The retailer operated 25 outlets in eight states across Africa’s biggest economy but had been struggling with disruptions. Ketron said it plans to keep open new ones and display more Nigerian-made products. Shoprite has struggled with supply-chain disruptions and repatriation of funds – both familiar problems to foreign businesses in the Nigerian market.
The Shoprite Group of Companies is Africa’s largest food retailer. It operates more than 2,892 stores in 14 countries across Africa. The company’s headquarters are in Brackenfell in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Shoprite Holdings Limited is a public company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, with secondary listings on both the Namibian and Zambian Stock Exchanges. As of 2021, the Shoprite Group employed more than 140,000 people in more than 2,892 stores across the African continent.
The Shoprite Group of companies was established in 1979. In 1990 Shoprite opened in Namibia. In 1991, it acquired the national Checkers chain. In 1995 the first store in Lusaka, Zambia, was opened. That same year they acquired a centralised distribution company Sentra, which had been acting as a central buyer for 550 owner-managed supermarkets, thereby allowing Shoprite to expand into franchising.
