Foschini Group, South Africa's worst-performing clothing retailer this year, said it plans to open several stores elsewhere in Africa by March as this country's shoppers struggle to repay debt.
The Cape Town company - which owns the Fabiani and Charles & Keith fashion brands in South Africa - joins retailers such as Carrefour, Shoprite Holdings, Walmart's Massmart, and Truworths International in plans to expand further in Africa.
The continent has 300million "middle-class" citizens and its economy is expected to grow at three times the pace of the US's next year.
The Reserve Bank has forecast an expansion of 2% for South Africa this year, the slowest since the 2009 recession.
Foschini plans to open five or six stores in Zambia and four in Ghana, CFO Ronnie Stein said this week.
The retailer will open 42 stores elsewhere in Africa in the 2015 financial year and 38 in 2016, he said. It also plans to add to the two stores in Nigeria.
"That will take us to 205 stores by the end of the 2016 financial year when our turnover from the rest of Africa will be R1-billion," Stein said.
"We always start with two stores in a country.
"Once we're happy with the environment, the logistics, the legal side, the tax side, the staffing side, then we roll out."
The number of South Africans with impaired credit records rose by 189000 to 9.53million in the first quarter, the National Credit Regulator said in June.
About 40% of Foschini's sales in fiscal 2013 were for cash, the balance on credit using the retailer's store cards, the company said on May 30.
Retailers "all recognise the need to expand outside South Africa because South Africa is becoming increasingly competitive," Roger Tejwani, a retail analyst at NOAH Capital Markets, said.
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