Frontline Research Group (FRG) built the outlet base. Native turns it into Lattice: a living map for offline trade.

Native is the operating system for offline trade.

Most retail outlets in Africa still sit outside the systems used to plan, sell, execute, and measure trade.

They exist in dense neighbourhoods, transport corridors, township clusters, rural nodes, and informal high streets. They move product every day. They shape availability, price, route economics, and brand presence. Yet many commercial decisions still depend on partial outlet lists, dated location files, and territory views that fall behind the market.

Native is changing that structure.

Frontline Research Group, now Native, has accumulated millions of geolocated retail outlets across Africa, with particular depth in traditional trade. That base gives Native a rare view of where offline trade actually happens. It shows which stores exist, where they sit, how they connect to routes and territories, and where commercial leaders need a clearer operating map.

Native has now taken that accumulated store base and made it more operational through Lattice.

Lattice maps the trade.

It converts outlet location, store attributes, and contributor-captured conditions into a structured Store Graph. Native’s agentic intelligence layer then reasons across that graph, detects gaps, prioritises updates, and turns static outlet records into a market map that can keep moving with the trade.

This matters because physical trade does not stand still.

A store opens. A store closes. A kiosk expands into a stocked outlet. A wholesaler becomes a stronger supply node. A route that looked complete last quarter starts missing new demand. In traditional trade, these shifts often happen faster than the formal systems built to track them.

Lattice is built for that reality.

In Tanzania alone, Native has more than 99 000 geomapped retail outlets. Each outlet is a point in the trade, but the value sits in the structure around it: where the store is located, what territory it belongs to, which route can reach it, what kind of outlet it is, and how its conditions change over time.

That is the difference between a store list and a living map.

A list says a store exists.

Lattice shows where that store sits inside the market.

For enterprise consumer brands, distributors, route-to-market teams, and commercial leaders, this changes the level of control available in African traditional trade. Coverage planning becomes more precise. Route design becomes less dependent on memory. Territory sizing becomes tied to real outlet density. White space becomes visible. Execution priorities become grounded in store-level reality.

Native’s architecture is integrated, but access remains modular.

Lattice maps the trade. Strata reads the market. Overwatch directs execution. Ratio One measures movement. Each product layer has a defined role. Together, they form the operating system for offline trade.

Lattice is the base layer because every decision depends on knowing where the trade is.

The next step is cadence.

Native is building Lattice toward a live census of African retail outlets. The system will be updated monthly, with every store visited at least once a year. Monthly updates keep the map current. Annual visits keep the ground truth intact. Contributor missions close the gap between what the platform knows and what the market has become.

No stale data.

This is not a cosmetic change to an outlet database. It is a shift from historical coverage files to an operating map that stays connected to store reality.

For years, Frontline Research Group built depth across African traditional trade by going where formal datasets were thin. Native now brings that base into an agentic intelligence system designed to read, update, and act on the physical market.

The result is Lattice: a living map of offline trade, built from millions of geolocated outlets and designed for the commercial decisions that determine growth.

Africa’s traditional trade is not invisible.

It has been waiting for the right operating system.

Contact

Steve JohnsonVP Africa Sales at NativeTel: +230 5493 6376Email: steve.johnson@native.io

Art Janse van RensburgDirector of Sales: AfricaTel: +27 (0)71 889 9080Email: Art@native.io

For more articles like this click here.  

If you enjoyed this website then check out our other sites: Wedding and Function, Home Food and Travel, Kids Connection, Thirsty Traveler, Bargain Buys, Boat Trips for Africa. 

Need help with your online marketing then visit Agency One