N'DJAMENA, Chad — The toasting sun and sandy breezes of Chad can create a powerful thirst. So when the work week ends, folks in N'Djamena crowd the mud-walled taverns along what is known as the Avenue de la Soif--the avenue of thirst.
There they slake that thirst with tall green bottles of Gala, a local beer savored by both foreigners and Chadians that has been brewed without interruption through two decades of civil wars.
John Blane, the U.S. ambassador to Chad, says Gala's taste rivals any beer in the world and is "simply the best in all of Africa."
The ambassador's assertion might earn him an argument in East Africa, where tourists in pressed khakis swill the local Tusker beer on the terrace of Nairobi's Norfolk Hotel. On some Sunday afternoons, even Kenya's vice president, Mwai Kibaki, can be found nursing a Tusker from the tap at the Muthaiga Golf Club.
Light Taste But Potent
A British diplomat in West Africa, however, argues the case for Club beer in Liberia, although his first experience was not auspicious.
"It tasted so much like my favorite English light beers that I was drinking them one after another," he remembered. "But when I tried to stand up, I couldn't."
Africa's high-quality, flavorful and inexpensive beer has long been one of the continent's success stories, as well as one of its best-kept secrets. Most of Africa's countries have gleaming, efficient and usually profitable breweries that turn out beers with names such as Flag, Stork, "33," Gazelle, Lion, Star, Mocaf, Castel and White Cap.
On a continent where factories are scarce, black Africa's breweries are among the largest private enterprises and stand as models for the future of industry here. They also brew big revenue for financially strapped governments. Gala's annual tax bill in Chad, for example, accounts for 10% of the government budget.
Advertising Soft-Pedaled
Producing beer in developing countries also has its own set of rules.
"We don't advertise heavily," Ian Warden of Kenya Breweries said. "When you're nation-building, you cannot afford to have people spending all their money on luxuries."
Accordingly, the Tusker advertising slogan is "Baada ya kazi ," Swahili for "After work."
Africa's beers most resemble European brews in taste, but Africans drink much less beer than either Europeans or Americans. And, at taverns such as Le Desert on the Avenue of Thirst, Gala is, often as not, served at room temperature--that is, warm.
That's the preference of most African beer drinkers, a taste acquired in rural areas where bottled beverages are available but refrigerators are not.
"There's really nothing like a warm brew to make me happy when I'm relaxing," said Ndirangu Muiruri, 54, a weekend beer drinker in Nairobi.
Although Europeans introduced Africa to conventional beer, Africans have been brewing their own suds for centuries, using fruit, honey and sugar--and the hot sun for fermentation. Still served in many rural African homes, the concoction often is poured from a tea kettle.
"Before the colonialists came, each tribe had its own drink," said K. Dieter Ulbricht, a German who has been brewing Tusker beer in Kenya for 30 years. "It wasn't very healthy. But the African already had a taste for fermented liquid. Then we came with 'our tribe's' beer and they fell for it."
Africa's breweries have survived and thrived in spite of many obstacles: poor road systems, the necessity of bringing ingredients from thousands of miles away, heavy import duties, shortages of spare parts, unsteady local economies and acquisitive local politicians.
The odds against producing a good beer in Africa are nowhere higher than in Chad. It is one of the most beleaguered countries in the world: Foreign and domestic armies have shot up the place, droughts regularly mock the land and the economy has risen and fallen--but mostly fallen--with the world cotton market.
Prospers Despite War
Yet the European-owned Brasseries du Logone has been brewing Gala since 1965. It is "the only significant Chadian enterprise whose operations have remained untroubled throughout the years of civil war," an independent economic analysis of the country recently concluded.
"Two things have always sold well and easily in Africa, locally made cloth and locally made beer," Mathieu Paesmans, a Belgian at the brewery, said. "You can sell as much beer as you want here."
Gala is brewed on a eucalyptus-shaded savannah in southwestern Chad near Mondou. The hops, barley and other ingredients are imported from Europe, reaching landlocked Chad sometimes after a yearlong journey by ship, train and truck.
Gala emerges from the factory in 22-ounce bottles, nearly twice the size of an American beer, and its European taste should really be no surprise; the brewery is jointly owned by the Anglo-Dutch food company Unilever and Heineken, with Heineken in charge of the brewing.
