Shingie Dube

The spread of large supermarket groups across the Southern and East African region raises important questions about local supplier capabilities, the ability of local suppliers to access supermarket group value chains, and the competitive landscape that the entry of large multinational retail groups creates. Over the past two decades, there has been a rapid expansion of South African supermarket chains into Southern Africa. However, recently we have also seen the growth into South Africa and Zimbabwe of Choppies, a supermarket chain from Botswana, which plans to open a further 31 new stores in Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) by the end of May 2015, and to grow into the Kenyan market by the end of 2015.