The French property development company Groupe Duval has announced plans to construct a new shopping mall in Lomé. It will be built beside the new bypass road heading towards Burkina Faso, a site chosen for its visibility and ease of accessibility. The construction will create five hundred new jobs and the mall will help transform Lomé’s landscape as well as have an impact on Togo’s economy.
The new shopping mall will have a retail space of 13,000m², including a 3,500m² supermarket and will feature a wide range of as yet unnamed multinational brands. It is likely that Groupe Duval will seek to attract one of the four large French supermarket brands into its space, all of which have a presence in West Africa: Auchan, Carrefour, Casino or Super U. Although it should be noted that Casino is the less likely option, as it tends to enter in Mercure (Casino’s franchise holder in West Africa) owned malls. As yet, Togo has no major grocery chain present in the country. Lomé’s largest supermarket retailer is Togolese chain Ramco, which has six stores.