Carrefour to Enter Africa

Carrefour SA (Boulogne Billancourt, France), the hypermarket giant with 1452 stores around the world, will be entering the African market in 2015.

The retailer that has spent much of the past two years exiting markets it failed to dominate, has partnered with Paris-based distributor CFAO SA to open stores in eight African countries.

Though CFAO is a French company, it’s engaged in the sale of manufactured goods, especially automobiles and pharmaceutical products, in many of France's former overseas territories. It was founded in 1887, as the Compagnie Française de l'Afrique Occidentale, to serve the African colonies. It was at one time owned by Kering SA (Paris), the company that bought the PPR fashion house earlier this year.

CFAO, which will own 55 percent of the venture with Carrefour, aims to generate about $1.3 billion a year, partly from revenue it will gain by building shopping malls on the continent.

Carrefour ceo Georges Plassat said the partnership will allow his company to avoid the roadblocks hypermarket competitors like Walmart Stores Inc. (Bentonville, Ark.) have faced trying to expand beyond South Africa: a lack of distribution and available real estate.

The first joint project will begin this year in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and should be operational by 2015, according to CFAO. In addition to Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, the agreement with CFAO covers Ghana, Cameroon, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Senegal.