OVERREACH
DIANNA GAMES: Debt wakes supermarket giant from pan-African dream
‘Investors are still interested but the company is now negotiating from a position of weakness’
East Africa’s largest supermarket chain, Nakumatt, has long epitomised an "Africa rising" success story, with its rapid growth from a small family-owned company to a retail behemoth in a region many analysts described a few years ago as a new frontier for consumer growth. By 2017, the company, which started as a small furniture and bedding shop in 1965, had 66 stores across East Africa. It pioneered 24-hour shopping and loyalty programmes in the region’s retail sector, its success also boosting other businesses in the manufacturing, retail, banking and property space. The owners, the Shah family, modelled the company on Walmart, itself having started out as a humble family owned business. They planned to build a pan-African brand to take on entrenched southern African retail chains in West and southern Africa. As a first string in this bow, the group snapped up Shoprite’s unprofitable stores in Tanzania and Uganda in 2014 and 2015.Nakumatt’s success, and that of other Kenyan retaile...
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