Africa's Local Champions Begin to Spread Out |
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May 26, 2010
Foreign consumer-goods companies including Coca-Cola Co., Nestlé SA and Unilever PLC have been in Africa for decades without much competition from local players. Now, home-grown companies are expanding aggressively across the continent, eager to accommodate a growing middle-class among the billion-person population.
Foreign consumer-goods companies including Coca-Cola Co., Nestlé SA and Unilever PLC have been in Africa for decades without much competition from local players. Now, home-grown companies are expanding aggressively across the continent, eager to accommodate a growing middle-class among the billion-person population.
Among the most prominent of these consumer upstarts: African retailers such as Nakumatt Holdings Ltd. of Kenya, the top supermarket chain in East Africa, MTN Group Ltd., Africa's largest cellphone provider, and South African restaurant chain Spur Corp. Nakumatt has expanded into three neighboring countries while 348-restaurant chain Spur has opened in seven other African countries.
Nakumatt chose to emulate an American icon: Kmart. On a visit to Florida in the 1980s, founder Atul Shah, a former mattress salesman, wandered into a Kmart and marveled at its cleanliness. He was so impressed at how the store sold food, household goods and furniture under one roof that he hung out there for hours a day for eight months. He became such a fixture that customers asked him for assistance. "Everybody was happy to be assisted by me," said Mr. Shah.
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