Angolan supermarket chain Candando, owned by businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, is on the verge of bankruptcy. It will close half its six stores and lay off around 1,000 employees. The freezing of its bank accounts in Portugal have left the retailer unable to import goods and barely able to operate.

In January, Candando’s owner, Isabel dos Santos, had her assets frozen by the Angolan government. The move came as Angolan President João Lourenço seeks to dismantle the legacy of the 38 year presidency of José Eduardo dos Santos, father of Isabel dos Santos.

Candando was founded in 2015 and opened its first store in May 2016. Before the proposed closures it had six stores, all in and around Luanda. Ms dos Santos had partnered with Portuguese retailer Sonae in 2011 to launch the Continente hypermarket chain in Angola. But the partnership never produced a store and in 2015 dos Santos hired two of the Portuguese executives working for Sonae on the project, leading to Sonae withdrawing from the partnership.

Candando’s sale or exit will not have a major impact on the Angolan supermarket sector – there are several domestic supermarket operators, including Kibabo, Kero and Intermarket, capable of taking over a high end hypermarket chain. Some of the assets could also be of interest to market leader Shoprite, which has 28 stores in Angola.

But as an oil-dependent country, Angola’s economy has been hit hard by the collapse in demand for oil (and impact on the price of oil) as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. For companies dependent on imports, the fall in the value of the Angolan Kwanza – it has halved in value in the past year – has made trading extremely difficult. Without access to its fx, Candando cannot survive for much longer and it’s not clear that the brand or its assets would necessarily be acquired by another company.