With Casino, Spar, Super U, Choithrams operating in Cameroon, and Carrefour opening soon, international and domestic supermarkets are in for a battle.

While most of the international attention in supermarket retail has focused on South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, all of which have experienced crises or downturns, investment in Francophone West and Central Africa has quietly seen major investments from local and international players alike. In this section we’ll look at Cameroon, where Casino, Super U and Spar already operate and Carrefour is about to open.

Casino, through its partner Mercure, has been in Cameroon since 2008 and has stores in Yaoundé and Douala. Choithrams’ Mahima supermarkets, which are long established in Cameroon, also operate in both cities. After that, there are a handful of local players such as Dovv, Bel Achat, Fokou and Ecomarché, catering more towards the emerging Cameroonian middle class. And in case of Fokou operating bases outside the two major cities.

This all changed in when Super U and Spar both opened their first stores in 2015, in June and October respectively. In Super U’s case, it partnered with.. Mercure, the owner of the Casino chain in Cameroon. Its Kadji Square store is the first real hypermarket in Cameroon.

In the background, Carrefour had also long signalled its intent to move into sub Saharan Africa. The French grocery chain partnered with CFAO in 2013 and announced it would have stores in 8 countries by 2015. That didn’t happen. It launched its first store in West Africa in February 2016, in Abidjan. In April this year Carrefour announced that it would be opening major mall-based hypermarkets in Yaoundé and Douala, to open later in 2017. It is seeking to open 6 new developments overall.

Carrefour’s announcement caused a major stir. Enough to attract the criticism of campaigning politician Bernard Njonga and his Croire Au Cameroun (CRAC), who came out against the retailer. He’s argued that it is being granted unfair advantages and will mean job losses for Cameroonian businesses.

Domestic retailers aren’t waiting to see what happens

Whatever the merit of Njonga’s case, grocery retail in Cameroon has got a lot more exciting. And that’s before we see if Auchan (present in Senegal and Mauritania) or Citydia (present in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria and Ghana) decide to join the fray.

Domestic supermarket retailers aren’t waiting for Carrefour to open or for a politician to step in and save them. We’ve noticed a spate of store openings from Santa Maria, who has now moved into Douala. At Dovv, store numbers have doubled to six. Bel Achat is opening its third store shortly. Domestic retailers are opening longer hours to capture more trade. They are improving customer service and the store environment. And they are having to think much harder about the scale, structure and efficiency of their supply chains.

Many of the bakeries (Soneco, Socropole, Santa Maria) that operate grocery stores are also positioning themselves for convenience and being more tuned into what Cameroonian consumers want. This is another point of difference against a traditional criticism of retailers that rely heavily on imported stock that is not tailored for local audiences.

So what happens next?

We think there are a few outcomes:

1. Unless it responds Choithrams’ Mahima will be squeezed. It has an older store network that struggles to compete with shiny new malls and large hypermarkets. Mahima opens its new store in Bonamoussadi later this month. We expect more activity over the next two years if it’s serious about competing.
2. Spar can’t just operate one 2,400m² store in Cameroon. It hasn’t opened a second store in its first two years of operation. If partners Dee-lite Sarl and Groupe ARNO don’t seek to grow the network we don’t see it as viable.
3. Domestic retailers will look to play the ‘Cameroon’ card more, especially in terms of positioning as a genuine domestic business with a higher percentage of domestically manufactured brands. In fact, we see Casino also trying this as a point of difference against other international retailers.
4. Unless something changes, Yaoundé and Douala are going to get crowded. We see little appetite among retailers currently to expand beyond those two cities and into, say, Bamenda or Bafoussam in the west.
5. French firms are typically open to investing in Cameroon, whose grocery market’s size is on a par with that of Côte d’Ivoire and often compared to it. But Cameroon is hard to penetrate outside the two major cities, slower growth than Côte d’Ivoire and higher risk. Expect an exit. We note that Casino’s online retail brand CDiscount exited in 2016 after just two years.
6. There is still space in genuine neighbourhood supermarket retailing – both areas Auchan and Citydia do well in.
7. Massmart’s Game banner, which operates in 12 countries in Africa, including Nigeria and Ghana, has yet to enter Francophone West or Central Africa. As such, there is still a gap for a true discount-oriented big box retailer.

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