Lightstone’s mall takeaways

  • Mall of Africa leads with most vehicle visits
  • Sandton City has most Affluent shoppers; Mall of Africa the most in Lower and Mid-level income categories
  • Dwell times have dropped
  • … as have mall visits

South Africa’s shopping centres have recovered from Covid 19, weathered challenging economic conditions and social interventions, and are adapting to the challenges of ecommerce. And recent media reports say retailers are benefiting from higher foot traffic and there are fewer vacancies in shopping centres, although consumer spending is marginally down year-on-year.

Lightstone took a look at other data to further assess mall health – with some interesting insights.

Busiest centres based on vehicle traffic

The Mall of Africa in Gauteng was South Africa’s busiest shopping centre based on vehicle stops at the centre, with Sandton City/Nelson Mandela Square and KwaZulu-Natal’s Gateway Theatre of Shopping not far behind for the period January to August 2024. That’s according to aggregated and anonymised telemetry data made available to Lightstone by Tracker.

While the Mall of Africa was the busiest by this measure, it is in fact the smallest centre of the three, with 131 000 m² of retail space, less than Sandton City/Nelson Mandela Square’s combined 146 000 m² and well short of Gateway Theatre of Shopping’s 176 398 m2.

Three busiest malls based on vehicle traffic


The Mall of Africa is ideally located in Midrand and is just off the N1 which links Johannesburg and Pretoria, and is not far from the intersection linking the N1 with the N3, which connects the east, west and south to the north.

Shoppers staying for shorter periods

Average dwell time at the three centres tracked each other, as the graph below shows, with shoppers spending most time at Sandton City/Nelson Mandela Square and least time at the Gateway Theatre of Shopping.

However, dwell times at the three centres started to fall in June, and while Gateway Theatre of Shopping has levelled out at around 75 minutes, the other two centres were still dropping.

Average dwell time


Shopper income levels

When it comes to shopper income levels, Sandton City/Nelson Mandela Square dominated the Affluent category, while Mall of Africa came out top in both the Lower income and Mid-level income categories.

Income level of visitors


Did Covid change visiting patterns to shopping centres?

While most shopping centres have recently reported higher foot traffic, our data suggested vehicle visits to two centres – Fourways Mall and Mall of Africa – have not in fact recovered to pre-Covid levels, as the graph below demonstrates.

Fourways Mall and the Mall of Africa


Of course, many visits to malls are by public transport or by foot, so foot traffic could inevitably exceed vehicle traffic. The data may also reflect a growing shift to online shopping, which accelerated during Covid, and might be leading to more permanent shopper behavioural change, both in terms of number of visits and dwell times.

The average number of mall visits per vehicle per year was 139 in 2019, but this had fallen to 128 in 2023.

Fourways Mall is in Sandton, not far from Mall of Africa, and is South Africa’s largest centre with 178 000 m² of retail space.