Written by Tiisetso Motsoeneng and Nomatter Ndebele | From Reuters

Massmart (MSMJ.J), South Africa’s No.4 retailer by market value, plans to enter oil-rich Angola with two stores by 2015, a senior executive said, as the unit of Wal-Mart (WMT.N) expands on a continent that is still largely an informal retail market.

Speaking at the Reuters Africa Investment Summit in Johannesburg, Mark Turner, Massmart’s Africa director, said one store would open in the first quarter of next year and the other in the third quarter.

“We’ve got two deals that are coming off the ground in Angola, which is a country on the southern part of Africa that we’re not represented (in),” Turner told the summit.

Another two stores would be opened in Angola in 2017.

Massmart, which operates in 11 sub-Saharan countries such Nigeria, Tanzania and Ghana, has been pushing further into the rest of the continent that is forecast to be home to 2 billion people by 2050, to offset slowing growth at home.

Turner also said the company – 51 percent owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc – was building its first store in Kenya after failing to clinch unspecified acquisitions that would have given it a substantial footprint in east Africa’s biggest economy.

The low margin, high volume retailer that sells everything from electronics products to food is also scanning French-speaking countries such as Senegal and Cameroon for opportunities.

Read more at Reuters