Shopping in Africa

Shopping for grocery and camping needs is not what we are used to in South Africa.  Information on the internet shows that the shops such as Woolworths, Pick’nPay, Spar, Foodlovers’ Market, Outdoor Warehouse, etc are very limited.

Due to limited space and vehicle weight considerations we cannot pack enough groceries, gas, drinking water, etc for the full trip and we will have to make do with what we find.

In our research we focused on our planned route and will update and give more details on what we found along the route:

• Fresh fruit and vegetables are widely available along the roadside – better and cheaper than in the shops
• South African gas cylinders cannot be refilled without taking a lot of different fittings with, as the sizes of their fittings differ from our sizes – found location of only 3 gas filling operators that do fill South African type LPG cylinders along our route – should be fine if we catch them open
• Shoprite stores are operating in Zambia in the larger towns along the major routes. I could find locations for three Shoprite stores in Malawi, and some new Shoprite stores in Mozambique – no Spar or PnP in Malawi, Tanzania or Mozambique
• Pick’nPay stores are operating in Namibia – Katima Mulilo has a PnP store.
• Spar stores are operating in Namibia and Zambia – also along the major routes
• Tanzania will be the challenge – few large, modern grocery stores outside of Dar es Salaam and none of the typical South African grocery chains. It seems that the typical dark grocery store with only dry and tinned food and frozen meat is the norm. We have identified one nice store on our route in Arusha.