Kenya’s capital Nairobi is the leading shopping mall developer in sub-Saharan Africa a survey by real estate consultancy firm Knight Frank has shown.
The Shop Africa 2016 report which is the first review of the retail market in sub-Saharan Africa revealed that Nairobi is the top city with the largest shopping centre development with approximately 470,000 square metres of shopping centre space in the pipeline.
Currently, Nairobi has a mall space of 391,000 square metres which is represented by beautiful malls such as Sarit Centre, The Junction and Garden City which hugely cause the number one ranking. Two Rivers Mall in Runda and The Hub in Karen are also iconic malls that result to the rank though they opened recently.
“While Nairobi has had shopping centres since the 1980s, the current wave of development is creating modern malls that are setting new standards for the market in terms of size and quality,” the report states.
International brands that have currently penetrated into the region include French retailer Carrefour who will be an anchor tenant at both Two Rivers and The Hub in Karen. Turkish fashion brand LC Waikiki will also enter the Kenyan market with a store at Two Rivers.
“Major international retail groups have had an interest in the wider sub-Saharan region. Most international brands go into the region either through partnerships with local operators or franchise agreements. The variety of retailers seeking to expand their footprint in the region has helped the newly developed malls to absorb the high demand,” the report indicates.
According to the report, the top five cities are Luanda in Angola which is second, Lagos in Nigeria has the third largest mall pipeline, and then Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and finally Maputo in Mozambique completes the top five hotspots for mall space development in sub-Saharan Africa.
These five are the large, fast-growing cities in economies that have seen rapid expansion and are the ones being targeted by investors in Africa.
