The fast-food giant will buy back some 70 restaurants before expanding into the continent.
According to Adele Shevel’s Business Times report, the Louisville-based KFC is waiting for the Competition Commission in South Africa to approve its reacquisition of some 70 restaurants in its South African market that consists of 640 branches and employees 30000 staff.
This move to buy back branches of the popular fast-food chain comes as the American corporation prepares to invest heavily in Africa, with plans to have some 850 branches in operation by 2015 in South Africa alone. Each new branch will generate 40 to 50 new jobs; that’s job creation of some 1100 jobs by KFC alone in the next four years.
In the report, Shevel writes that South Africa’s market is KFC’s sixth largest in the world, with the brand cooking and selling about 9% of commercially produced chickens in the country, and KFC managing director Keith Warren is quick to add that “South Africans prefer chicken as a primary source of protein”, so it makes sense to expand in the country and the African continent.
And it’s not just the South African market that the famous chicken brand is keeping an eye on; it entered the Nigerian market two years ago and is expanding in that country, bringing the total African market penetration to approximately 14 countries, with plans in place to expand to a further six within the next few years.
