According to CBNC Africa, the country has just under 2000 malls which leaves little space for the erection of malls in the future, with South Africa’s shopping centre industry becoming overtraded.

Leading the numbers with the world's largest number of malls is United States, Canada, China, Japan and the United Kingdom.

Developers are said to be looking for other initiatives in growing the industry with re-development being their core focus.

Partner at MDS Architecture, Donald McGillivray, who has been designing malls for 20 years, told CNBC Africa that tenants may be part of the people putting pressure on developers to extend.

“The next phase of retail in South Africa, and we already see it happening, is going to be refurbishments. Because of the competition and because there are so many big malls out  there in South Africa, developers are taking already existing shopping centres and they’re going to be re-doing these malls, turning them into state of the art facilities,” says McGillivray.

Johannesburg’s Fourways Mall poses as an example thereof, being the one which is forging ahead with an additional 90 000 square metres, seeing it grow to 170 000 square metres. Upon completion in 2018, it will be the biggest in the Gauteng Province and the second biggest in the country.

In its planning, Waterfall City’s Mall of Africa has already made provisions for future growth.

“What we did very uniquely here, we’ve got 130 000 [square metres] at this point in time. We have catered to be able to take it bigger but we have catered for it now in our planning. We’ve planned for the add-on, as and when demand is there,” Attacq CEO, Morne Wilken, which owns the Mall of Africa told CNBC Africa.

Since post-apartheid, shopping centres have grown from an average of 4 million square metres to 23 million square meters to date.

Reports suggest that Dirk Prinsloo is one of the few people in the world who has completed over 3000 studies on 250 shopping centres. He says the growth in the South African population is one of the contributors to the number of malls the country currently has.

“The population has increased from 40 million people [in 1994] to 55 million, which has contributed to the growth in the shopping centre industry. The growth in the middle markets, referring to LSM 5 to 7, that particular market has grown by more than four million households during the last 20 years. That has contributed immensely to the spend in the market,” says Prinsloo.

According to Prinsloo, another major factor in the growth of shopping malls is South Africa’s retail industry which has been getting heavy international attention since 2010 with a large number of big names coming into the country’s shopping centres.

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