Given that volumes of homemade spirits and brews are estimated four times the volumes of commercial beer in Africa, it’s only logical that SABMiller is trying to woo beer drinkers across the continent to trade up to commercially-produced alcohol, i.e. their beers. The cheapest commercially brewed beers in Africa are sorghum beers and with Chibuku SABMiller think they have got a winner.

In the battle over market shares South African Breweries (SAB), a subsidiary of SABMiller, declared itself the winner. On 14 February 2012, Norman Adamai, Managing Director of SAB, said the brewer had recaptured the market it lost when one of its biggest brands, Amstel, was taken by competitor Brandhouse, the joint venture between Heineken, Diageo and Namibia Breweries.

Two years ago SAB, the South African unit of SABMiller, announced it would build a brewery in northern Namibia after it had finally obtained a licence to brew beer in Namibia following a decades long struggle. But to date, not even the ground has been broken. What has held up the project? According to rumour, Norman Adami, the powerful Managing Director of SAB, did not want to see 220,000 hl in production volume go to neighbouring Namibia, as he was still desperately trying to cope with over-capacity at his seven breweries after the loss of the Amstel licence which had accounted for more than 9 percent of SAB’s volumes before April 2007 (when Heineken terminated the licensing contract).

If they can brew a clear beer with sorghum, why can't they do it with cassava? Actually, SABMiller seem to have come up with a way of doing it. In an effort to provide consumers with an affordable beer, SABMiller at the end of October 2011 put the first cassava-based beer, called Impala Cerjeva, into the Mozambique market.

It’s good to know: should you plan to travel around the DR Congo by truck (some reckless tourists seem to do just that), pick a truck carrying bags of something soft like peanuts because sitting on top of them can be quite comfortable. Beer trucks are not.

Words fail us when looking at the prices paid by international brewers for Ethiopia’s privatised breweries. Early in September 2011 it was reported that Diageo, the world’s major spirits company, submitted the highest bid for Ethiopia’s state-owned Meta Abo Brewery.

It’s a big worry. Many Kenyans, especially Kenyan men, do not have any hobbies. All they enjoy doing is going to bars to drink. The African bloggosphere is full of complaints about male folk vanishing in the morning and staggering home in the evening, while leaving much of the work on the coffee farms to women and children.

In the latest round of privatisations, Pierre Castel did not get lucky. Two state-owned breweries, Harar Brewery and Bedele Brewery, went to Heineken for a reported USD 163 million. Now Mr Castel’s local unit BGI Ethiopia has secured a deal its managers believe will help them conquer the northern market.

East African Breweries (EABL) has agreed to buy a 20 percent stake in its Kenyan unit from SABMiller’s African unit for 19.53 billion shillings (USD 225 million), EABL said on 6 June 2011.

Readers, hold on to your seats. Diageo is said to have offered USD 200 million for Ethiopia’s state-owned Meta Abo brewery which in its last financial year made a profit of USD 2.6 million on beer sales of perhaps 600,000 hl. That’s a multiple of … sheer madness.