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The stories people were told and Nairobi's mall mania...

1/
African Development bank came up with a report that showed that Africa had 300 million-strong middle class earning $2 to $20 a day — putting the middle class at 34% of Africa’s population.

standardmedia.co.ke/business/artic…
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The mall hype came in tandem with The Economist magazine ‘Africa rising narrative.’ Africa, said the magazine in 2011, was re-awakening. National output, gross domestic product (GDP), was growing, creating more jobs even as wages improved.
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As malls sprung up, value addition in real estate activities peaked in 2016 growing at 8.8%. A lot of money flowed into the sectors from private investors abroad, with the stock of foreign liabilities increase by more than 4 times from Sh69.7bn in 2012 to Sh321.6bn in 2017.
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By 2016, Nairobi had turned into a fighting ground for mall developers. At the beginning of 2016, Garden City was the talk of the town, described by the The Economist, as the “temple of consumerism” while Nairobi was showered with praise as the city of “malls and highways.”
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But Garden City quickly lost the bragging rights to Two Rivers Mall, a Sh25.1 billion shopping complex. Two Rivers is the new monument of consumerism, whose unveiling saw the retail space stretch to 470,000 square metres.
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But there was a problem with Africa’s one-billion-strong population and its much-vaunted middle class, a HBR article found.

For most multinationals that rushed into the continent following the Africa rising narrative, they struggle to hit revenue.
qz.com/africa/472156/…
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Shopping habits give a hint of Kenyans’ destitution, as millions cannot afford the luxurious goods sold in these malls. Further, a duka in the neighbourhood is as much a shop as it is a bank, with the national statistician showing that most Kenyans borrow from shopkeepers.
8/
A study by KNBS in 2015/16, showed that four out every five households did shopping from kiosks, general shops or open market.

Although supermarkets are the anchor tenants for shopping malls, less than 4% of Kenyans made purchases from these retail stores
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There were just too many malls for a population that did not do their shopping from supermarkets, let alone buying Gucci from one of the exhibition stores.

Even in urban areas like Nairobi, less than 10 per cent of Kenyans shop in supermarkets.
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With unexpectedly lower rentals, developers who had taken out loans to build were falling out with lenders. Real estate’s share of non-performing loans (NPLs), rose the fastest compared to the other sectors in the quarter ending June 2018.
standardmedia.co.ke/business/artic…
11/
Besides giving free space, other desperate measures to boost traffic to malls have included doling out free parking space. But they still have not been enough to rekindle the dying embers of the mall-frenzy that reached its peak in 2017.
standardmedia.co.ke/business/artic…
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