Nakumatt Rwanda, a subsidiary of Nakumatt Holdings—East Africa’s leading retail supermarket chain— will open another outlet in Kigali in August, its management said. 

The new outlet, which will be twice bigger than the current one at Union Trade Center (UTC) approximately covering a surface area of 4000 square meters, will be housed at Kigali City Towers.

"We want to expand our services nearer to our customers so that they can shop easily instead of going all the way across town,” Nakumatt Holdings Managing Director, Atul Shah, told Business Times in a phone interview.

The total investment outlay in the project is estimated at of €2.5m (Rwf2.1b), he said, adding that it is one of the company’s wider expansion plans in the region.

Nakumatt Rwanda Country Manager, Adan Ramata, said: "We had not been able to expand in the last three years because of the global economic crisis that affected the entire world and we had also not found a location that suit our requirements.”  

The 24 hour service supermarket says that it employs more than 100 people in Rwanda. It projects to employ the same number of employees at the new outlet.

Ramata expects the move to benefit local firms that supply their products to the chain supermarkets.

Ranked 25th retail business on the Planet Retail listing of the top 30 global retailers in June 2007, Nakumatt currently boasts of 32 outlets across East Africa in major cities.

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