Good afternoon. News that South African supermarket chain Shoprite is considering closing its stores in Mozambique will add to the generally lukewarm sentiment among businesses. In some ways, it is not very surprising. Two Shoprite stores, one in the town of Macia in Gaza province and one in the Magoanine neighbourhood of the city of Maputo, were damaged during the nationwide protests last year, and have not been reopened. The political climate remains tense and the risk of violent disorder hangs in the air. And Shoprite has been facing increased competition in recent years from the Dutch retail franchise Spar and from increasing numbers of small neighbourhood convenience stores run by immigrants from other African countries. With the economy in a fragile state and more people living precariously, it is likely that more people are shopping more frequently and on a smaller scale, instead of doing big grocery shops. This favours neighbourhood shopping over making long trips to a large supermarket.
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However, none of this was raised as a concern by the company’s chief executive Pieter Engelbrecht in his interview with the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. Instead, he talked about how the big liquefied natural gas (LNG) project led by TotalEnergies in Cabo Delgado province had still not restarted, and about insurgents returning to the district of Palma, where the project, known as Mozambique LNG, is located. His point about insurgents is presumably that they might pose a threat to the project restarting.
