SABMiller’s new beverage plant is the first local manufacturing facility in Southern Sudan’s capital city, Juba and has the capacity to brew 180,000 hl of clear beer and 60,000 hl of carbonated soft drinks annually. Up until now, Southern Sudan’s eleven million people only had access to beers and soft drinks imported from neighbouring countries.

The background: Heineken and Diageo bought a stake in NBL in 2003 from Interbrew. Since then they have attacked South African Breweries in neighbouring South Africa with their Windhoek beers.

Let’s hope the anti-alcohol lobby does not read this. In their eyes, any form of alcohol is bad. However, some alcohol is worse than others and for as long as consumers continue to enjoy a nightcap or two, governments have to make sure somehow that their voters are protected from toxic moonshine.

No one in established democracies needs ethics training to know that providing a member of parliament with one million dollars, a Rolls Royce, rugs, antiques, furniture, yacht club fees and vacation expenses in exchange for, well, favouring a certain company, is committing bribery. But businesses can participate in the political process legitimately and legally.

According to local media reports, the American soft drink Coca-Cola has become a symbol of Ethiopia’s deepening financial troubles. On 28 March, the beverage started flowing again after a pause of two weeks. The East African Bottling Share Company (EABSC), Coca-Cola’s local bottler only restarted distributing the soft drink after it had received sufficient foreign exchange to import crown corks from Kenya.

Both South Sudan and Ethiopia are far from politically stable. The government in Khartoum has yet to acknowledge the peace treaty brokered in 2005 between the Arab- and Muslim-dominated north and the mainly Christian or Animist, non-Arab south. Whenever there are clashes between southern and northern soldiers, the semi-autonomous region of South Sudan worries that the national army seeks to provoke a new civil war.

Let’s put it this way: the Sudanese government in Khartoum will not like it. After all, it introduced Islamic Sharia law in 1983 and banned the sale of alcohol. But what can it do? Tensions between northern and southern Sudan over disputed oilfields, with both sides apparently arming for war, are still running high, even after a peace deal in 2005, which allowed the southern rebels to form a secular government. Nevertheless, having their own brewery must have been high on the former rebels’ agenda or they would not have allowed SABMiller into their country.

What could possibly possess Namibia’s government to grant a licence to South African Breweries? For years, SAB’s applications for a bottling licence which would allow the South African brewing giant to package some of its beer in neighbouring Namibia, have been rejected by the Namibian government. This has given the country’s only brewer, Namibian Breweries, a quasi monopoly. Apparently, not for much longer.

Brewer SABMiller says lager sales are down 1 percent in its South African operation, SA Breweries (SAB), for the period April to September 2008 as consumers feel the effect of high food and fuel prices and competition in the premium beer segment.

Looks like the Nigerian beer market is going to witness some real action in the months to come. On 27 November 2008 it was announced that the world’s number two brewer SABMiller has entered into agreement to acquire a majority stake in the recently resuscitated Port Harcourt-based Pabod Breweries. The days of Nigeria’s beer duopoly seem truly over. Now Heineken und Guinness have to face competition from both SABMiller and the Castel Group.