WARRI, Nigeria — Groups of children wandered inside,
wide-eyed at the plenty. Teenagers and adults took selfies and
group photos, raving about the convenience, the security, the
leisure and, not least, the air-conditioning, so silent,
omnipresent and soothing.
Some had stepped inside places like this during trips
to the United States, Europe or even Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos,
which got its first one just a couple of years ago.
Others were “Johnny-Just-Come” first-time visitors,
standing confused before sensor-activated doors. They drew smiles
from veterans who had already been once or twice to the newest and
biggest attraction in this Nigerian city in recent memory: a
gleaming shopping mall.
“I’m very, very, very excited,” said John Monday, who
had traveled nearly 200 miles to visit the mall here on a recent
Saturday afternoon, as a friend took a photo of him posing in front
of a supermarket. “A middle-class person can come into this mall
and feel a sense of belonging.”
Delta Mall opened here last spring, bringing to about a
dozen the number of Western-style shopping malls catering to 180
million people in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. Many
enclosed malls, anchored by supermarkets and big box stores, with
other tenants lining long hallways, may be struggling in the United
State. But in Nigeria, which has Africa’s biggest economy and is
projected to overtake the United States as the world’s third-most
populous nation by 2050, malls are just taking off.
The emergence of malls — and mall culture — in Nigeria
reflects broad trends on the continent, including a growing middle
class with spending power and the rapid expansion of cities like
Warri that are little known outside the region.
As in America, malls in Nigeria have quickly become
hangouts for the young and destinations for families. Their rarity
also imbue a sense of exclusivity.
Pushing a shopping cart full of food and the latest
Chinese smartphone, Wealth Mark, 22, strolled through Delta Mall
with his younger sister, Confidence, and her friend, Franca, all
with wide smiles. Mr. Mark stopped to take photos of the two young
women with the smartphone, then a selfie of all three.
“When I am meeting my friends here or in Lagos, we
always go to the mall,” said Mr. Mark, who does marketing for a
bar-code company owned by an older sister. “We can just spend a few
hours at the mall and relax.”
Even older Nigerians who were skeptical about paying
premium prices over traditional markets saw the mall’s value as a
family outing.
“My kids enjoyed it,” said Victor Omunu, 53, adding
that he would never shop for himself at the mall. “I bought them
ice cream. It’s not bad at all, the mall. I was happy because I was
with my family. I even met some old friends.”
The malls, like the new cars that have replaced the
beat-up tokunbos (roughly, used cars) on Nigerian roads, provide
visible confirmation that, despite the country’s many problems,
life has become materially better for many in recent years. Besides
shops, the malls have brought leisure activities, like going to the
movies and dining at food courts.
“These are things we are used to seeing outside
Nigeria,” said Mr. Monday, 28, a gas turbine operator, who first
experienced mall culture when he visited an aunt living in Scotland
in his early 20s. Now, a mall is scheduled to open in his hometown,
Uyo, late this year. “I will be going there frequently,” he
said.
One of the main cities in Nigeria’s oil-producing
region, Warri has grown rapidly in recent years, like many other
medium-size cities in the country. New housing developments are
clustered on the outskirts.
Nigeria’s population, which is growing and urbanizing
at one of the fastest rates in the world, is expected to increase
to 400 million from 180 million by 2050, . That would place
Nigeria behind only India and China.
The size of Nigeria’s middle class, as well as
Africa’s, varies according to the definitions used. But many
experts agree that Nigeria’s size and population growth will drive
the expansion of Africa’s middle class.
Standard Bank, a South African bank with branches
across the continent, estimated that Nigeria’s middle class grew by
600 percent from 2000 to 2014. While 4.1 million Nigerian
households are now considered middle class, or 11 percent of the
total population, an additional 7.6 million households would make
it into that category by 2030, according to the bank’s
projections.
Resilient Africa, a South African joint venture that
includes Shoprite, the continent’s biggest food retailer, built the
mall here. It is working on five other malls in other cities and
looking to secure four more sites, said Eddie McDonald, who heads
Resilient’s Nigerian operations.
“The retail trade in Nigeria is still in its infancy
stage, but growing,” he said.
Informal shops, individually run, are still thriving.
Street hawkers sell food, clothes and home appliances on sidewalks,
or wherever they can find a captive audience, like Nigeria’s epic
traffic jams, known as go-slows. The hawkers often compete directly
with the malls, selling their wares to people driving into parking
lots next to retailers like Game, a discount superstore owned by
Walmart.
Women in traditional outfits went to
Delta Mall in Warri after a wedding.
“The informal Nigerian economic sector is very strong,”
said Chimaraoke Izugbara, a Nigerian researcher at Nairobi, Kenya.
“Even with these big shopping malls and the complicated Walmart
economy that has come to Nigeria, you see that some upper-class
people still go to the market and buy their fish from the old woman
on the road.”
Here in Warri, people have traditionally bought clothes
at the hundreds of tiny shops in Igbo Market, named after the
ethnic group that dominates the business. Once a year, shop owners
travel to southern China where, with the help of locally based
Nigerian middlemen, they buy goods and ship them here.
Ebere Chukwu, 38, a shop owner since 1999, said he had
been to Delta Mall with his family, but only “to feed my eyes.”
“That place looked like abroad, it looked like
America,” he said.
But Mr. Chukwu was confident that longtime customers
would not desert Igbo Market for the mall. The market’s prices are
cheaper.
Esther Ogbolu, who was shopping for shoes at Igbo
Market, said she had found the mall unaffordable, though she spoke
approvingly of its air-conditioning, smiling at the memory.
But to other businessmen, like Matthew Asegiemhe, the
future lies in the mall. Since opening a clothing store, Button Up,
in the city five years ago, he has seen sales rise 15 percent to 20
percent each year, and decided to open a branch in the mall.
“Middle-class customers are increasing — that’s why,”
Mr. Asegiemhe said.
Anderson Williams, 25, an employee at a road
construction company, was on his fourth trip to the mall — shopping
for pants and arranging to buy a leather sofa set on installment.
He did not mind paying more.
“I love the mall, the whole environment entirely,” he
said. “I love the AC especially.”
There were future consumers, too, like the seven young
brothers and sisters wandering through the supermarket aisles,
often releasing squeals of surprise and delight.
“There’s anything you want,” said Fatima Mohammed, 10.
“There are shoes, medicine, there is cake, everything you
want.”
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Aroma Foodland, the
first restaurant to open in the food court, the mall’s manager,
Olushola Oni, led the group in prayer, standing before a counter
with meat pies, sandwiches, egusi soup and pounded yam.
“This eatery will go to places in the name of Jesus,”
he said to a resounding “amen.”
Godwin Isemede and his son, Emmanuel, 7, were among the
restaurant’s first customers. An engineer at a cellphone company,
Mr. Isemede said he would now buy his clothes here, not in the
United States during his yearly visits. He would no longer have to
drive to Enugu, about 200 miles east of here, to visit the mall
there to please his son.
“People now have somewhere to go to in Warri,” Mr.
Isemede said. “There was no life here before.”