No flies on Shoprite, and if there were, they’d find a way to sell them affordably, and for a tidy profit. Where were we? Ah yes. Barely has the ink dried on reports that The Big Red One will be exiting Nigeria, and we have a buyer for their local assets, the dramatically named Nigerian property outfit Persianas. While no price tag has been revealed for the deal, Shoprite’s Nigerian business is worth around $73m all in, so it’s got to be there or thereabouts. As you know, Shoprite has been in Nigeria for 15 years, and will be passing the slippery and dangerous baton to Pick n Pay, which is trying a small local super approach in that challenging geography. In other Shoprite news, they are adding a free monthly funeral benefit to their Xtra Savings loyalty programme, giving predefined beneficiaries access to a R4,500 Shoprite grocery voucher when the time comes, as an incentive for basic monthly card swipe requirements.

Comment: Genius. True and relevant value, in exchange for measurable loyalty.

Even as Woolies works to redefine itself as a business to repair the fallout of the Australian adventure and arrest the decline of clothing and general merchandise, The Dapper One is still delivering in the spaces it has long dominated: innovation in food, and the Good Business Journey. Regarding the former: witness the launch of a range of convenient do-it-yourself pickling condiments and salad dressings. Their pickling vinegars – available in Lightly Seasoned, Sweet and Sour, or Mediterranean – are a particular stroke of genius in a country where each one of our diverse cultures has a tradition of preserving edible items for posterity. Regarding the Good Business Journey, Woolies has rolled out another 52 plastic bag free stores, for a total of over 200 so far. They’ve also launched sustainable packing for their famed avocados, using a kraft box base made from 63% recycled paper and covered with a fully recyclable shrink wrap, delivering an annual plastic saving of 35 – 40 tons.

Comment: We have been fortunate enough to travel far and wide. And nowhere have we seen the coherence and innovation of the Woolies food offering, a gem in the crown of South African grocery retail.

Clicks and Dis-Chem are gearing up for a putative vaccine rollout as soon as stocks are available – both in stores and through their specialised supply chains. Dis-Chem is in talks with landlords, other retailers and nursing agencies to beef up the vaccination services that the 191 Dis-Chem stores will provide. They will also leverage their network of DCs to get the vaccines to where they are needed. Clicks had already registered 62 stores to help with the Phase 1 rollout of vaccines to health workers. It will also use its UPD wholesale brand, which serves all Clicks pharmacies and 1,250 independent pharmacists, to get the vaccines out there. Neither business expects to make any money for the rollout, recovering costs and nothing more from the Government, but both are likely to experience spikes in sales as punters come in for the jab and stick around for the vitamin supplements and the small personal electronic items.

Comment: Pretty sure we’ve mentioned it before, but South Africa’s mighty private sector is an indispensable national asset, in an emergency like this one, or in the critical day-to-day task of lifting our people out of poverty.

Somewhat counterintuitively, one of the casualties of the pandemic has been the ability of big global businesses to run roughshod over labour. With the rise of both online retail and the gig economy, there’s been a massive spike in demand for warm bodies to deliver the goods, and by the inexorable laws of supply and demand this has led to better wages and working conditions, and the conversion of part-time jobs to full-time employment by businesses like Walmart and Costco as they compete for staff with the likes of DoorDash and Uber. And businesses are starting to appreciate anew the benefits of staff that know and care about what they are doing. Instacart, for example, has had to lay off 1,900 temp shoppers as stores use their own staff for order fulfilment. Unrelated, in the UK, Tesco are reporting strong sales growth of +7.1% to £53.4bn for the 2020/21 FY, although operating profit was down -28.1% to £1.8bn. And finally, M&S are taking Aldi to court over the latter’s Cuthbert The Caterpillar cake, which M&S believe bears too close a resemblance to its own iconic Colin The Caterpillar chocolate roll cake, that has sold over 15 million units since hatching in 1990.

Comment: Quite right, too.

There has been no production of sugar since the beginning of April, and none is likely before the end of May. Local sugar producers generally produce sugar for the local market for nine months of the year, and sell for twelve, with a slight dip in local supply at the end of March. This year, however, producers like Illovo, RCL, Gledhow and Tongaat Hulett have none to supply, and the flow of the sweet stuff from Swaziland has also been stopped. This puts a business like Super Syrups in something of a bind: the business needs 500 tons of sugar for its April targets alone, and now it’s too late for them to import the shortfall. Some of the producers have claimed that there’s no emergency at all, and that it’s just the usual seasonal dip in production. Tongaat Hulett have said that their mill is merely down for maintenance for a few weeks.

Comment: For a business based on rolling fields of green under a blue sky, with perhaps some gently waving palms over a distant verandah’d farmhouse, the sugar industry sure does bring the drama.

Big news from M4Jam, which just recently won the highest possible accolade from the WSA Global Congress by becoming a Global Champion for 2021. The WSA was founded in 2003 as part of the United Nations World Summit on Information Society, and brings together United Nations agencies, academia, and the private sector in tackling the world’s social issues using new technology. M4Jam became the ‘Smart Settlements & Urbanization Global Champion’ for addressing South Africa's socio-economic development challenges, in addition to helping achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. M4Jam’s networking platform is open to anyone with a mobile device, both upskilling its jobbers through training modules and pairing them with short-term work opportunities from businesses in their area. But you can read more about them on our partner page, here .

Comment: A very big deal, and well deserved. Congratulations, friends!

The World Bank has had some stern words to say about South Africa’s current economic trajectory. If we had continued on the growth path we were on in the early 0’s, we would be looking at GDP per capita of R65,000, they say, instead of R50,000, where it is now, and where it was in 2006. But the effects of our lost decade and the recent depredations of the COVID-19 pandemic have left us in a very different place. All is not forsaken, however. Our growth prospects have been revised upwards by the IMF, as noted last week, to +3.1%. A stronger anti-corruption position seems to be prevailing at the highest levels of Government. And last week, South Africa was ranked number one globally for business process outsourcing, in a survey of executives from eight key sourcing markets. This, says President Ramaphosa, speaks to your service ethic, our location in the same time zone as many of the big markets, and our solid digital infrastructure, and represents an exciting new vector for economic growth.

Comment: We have many pockets of excellence in our economy. It’s time we grew them to achieve critical mass.