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Africa's biggest shopping mall opens in S. Africa

Xinhua, April 28, 2016 Adjust font size:

Africa's biggest shopping mall, which cost five billion rand (about 345 million U.S. dollars), opened its doors to the public on Thursday amid much pomp and fanfare.

Situated in Waterfall City in Midrand north of Johannesburg, the Mall of Africa has more than 300 stores, occupying 131,000 square metres of retail space.

The mall was opened at a time when some property experts argue that there is an oversupply of retail space that threatens to eat into the returns of the SA real estate investment trusts.

South Africa has more than 23 million square metres of shopping centre space. The country has another two million square metres of shopping malls under construction or planned, according to Urban Studies, a Johannesburg-based property market research firm.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Gauteng Premier David Makhura said he anticipated a boom of housing projects around the Mall of Africa.

"It's important that people work where they live. We are looking into a housing development in the area," he said.

"This investment is a sign of trust in the Gauteng Provincial Government," Makhura added.

The mall has created about 14,000 jobs and is expected to boost the local economy.

Makhura said the mall is linked with a lot of developments around the province, in which the government was partnering with the private sector.

Tens of thousands of people descended on the mall on the first day of its opening, making the mall jam-packed.

There were long queues of people trying to get hold of opening deals.

Hundreds of shoppers tried to camp outside overnight in order to be first in line on Thursday to get into the mall, Rosemary Nkosi, a worker at the mall, told Xinhua.

"We chased away many of these people last night but they started arriving back around 5 am,"Nkosi said.

Many people lined up at a Swedish clothing chain H&M, Game and the electronics shop Dion Wired, which slashed prices on many products as they opened the flagship stores.

By 13:30 local time Thursday, the mall's visitor monitoring systems counted more than 68, 900 people moving through the doors. By 14:00 the number had increased to 73, 000, according to the mall management.

About 15 million people will visit the mall annually, according to an estimate by the developers. Endit