 Supermarkets matter for South Africa and the Southern African region. From the perspective of shoppers, you and I, a one-stop shopping experience, but importantly from the perspective of suppliers and developing capabilities of suppliers in the region, supermarkets offer a pathway through which suppliers can supply their products not just in their local respective countries, but throughout the Southern African region. A handful of supermarkets in South Africa tend to dominate the sector, so your top four supermarkets tend to hold more than 70% of the South African market. Given that South African supermarkets have a network in Southern Africa, most of the investment in supermarket industry is by South African players in the rest of the region. So having access to that network is extremely important for suppliers located in the different countries in Southern Africa. It is the way in which they can get their products not just in their own country, but into neighboring countries. We look at what are some of the challenges and the bottlenecks present that make it very difficult for suppliers to get their product onto supermarket shelves and how some of these challenges can be overcome. Our research is conducted primarily through in-depth interviews with players along the supermarket value chain. So starting from your suppliers of supermarkets, your in-between wholesalers, your independent retailers, as well as the large supermarkets chains themselves. This is supplemented with trade data from publicly available data sources. Supermarkets can take active policies to open up shelf space for locally produced products, regionally produced products, and to some extent displace imports of these products. They can do this by reducing the costs associated with getting a product on a supermarket shelf. They can take active and active stance in making sure that it's affordable for small and medium suppliers in the region to get their product onto supermarkets shelves. One win-win solution would be promoting alternative routes to market. So not your traditional supermarkets, but alternative routes such as municipal markets, wholesalers, buying groups, etc., in order to get suppliers linked to consumers. And this is something that policymakers can do in the region to ensure that capabilities are built in municipal markets, for example.