Participants in the deal will include SAB’s employees, black-owned licensed liquor retailers and retail liquor licence applicants, as well as registered black-owned customers of ABI, the soft drinks division of SAB, and the broader South African community through a newly established SAB Foundation.

The African beer market has grown every year since 1995, with further growth projected for 2009 and 2010, despite the difficult global economic environment, according to Plato Logic’s latest Africa Beer Market Report. “We now expect beer consumption across the African continent to pass 100 million hectolitres by 2011, possibly even next year (2010)”, commented Ian Pressnell, Director of Plato Logic.

In the end, the Namibian Government probably ran out of reasons why SABMiller cannot build a brewery in the country. Initially, the Government will have tried to protect its then Namibian-owned brewery from competition. But after Namibia Breweries were bought by Heineken/Diageo in 2003 and the two partners were granted a license to build a 3 million hl brewery near Johannesburg, the Namibian Government had to do likewise and allow SABMiller to build a brewery in Namibia.

Ok, YOU may not like them but millions of people in Africa enjoy drinking maize or sorghum-based beverages, be they alcoholic or not. Because they have texture and a certain viscosity, many African consumers think these thickish, opaque and milkshake-type beverages a meal replacement. And often they are.

Let’s put it this way: You would be daft as a brewer not to try to take advantage of a sizeable and profitable beverage category especially if you consider yourself a total beverage company. For Diageo, Africa is the main driver to Diageo’s overall beer performance and is now its largest beer market, over twice the size of Ireland and Great Britain. In order to continue writing this success story Diageo/Guinness have been forced to innovate. If, like Diageo you sell everything from spirits to beer to RTDs, why not soft drinks too?

In the past financial year ended 30 June 2009, Guinness Nigeria, the country’s number two brewer, recorded a turnover of NGN 89 billion which represents an increase of 29 percent over the prior year and a trading profit of NGN 19.81 billion, an increase of 25 percent over the previous year. Earnings per share rose 14 percent to 918 Kobo. Profit before tax grew by 11 percent to NGN 19 billion up from NGN 17 billion.

Never mind the world economic crisis: beer consumption in Nigeria is going up. In 2008, Nigeria produced more than 15 million hl beer, up 15 percent on the previous year, says the Barth Report.

The ruling by the High Court in London has granted SABMiller an injunction which stops Kenya’s East African Breweries (EABL), which is majority-owned by Diageo, from purchasing Serengeti Breweries in Tanzania, which is the number two brewer behind SABMiller’s Tanzania Breweries (TBL).

Is a contract still worth the paper it is written on? Clever lawyers would tell you: “no”. Especially if the contract honours a gentlemen’s agreement not to bash each other’s heads in.

SA Breweries said their black staff and retailers would be issued with new shares worth about USD 750 million, funded through dividends over ten years.