Africa maintains pace as fastest growing beer market

Africa is set to maintain its pace as the fastest growing global beer market, according to Canadean’s latest Global Beer Trends report.  

Africa is predicted to achieve an average growth rate of 5% from 2015 to 2020, ahead of Asia which is expected to grow at an average rate of 3% during the same period.

In contrast, mature markets in the east, west Europe and North America growth of 1% or even less is predicted from 2015 to 2020.

In terms of volume sales, Africa is anticipated to see an incremental increase of more than 37 thousand hectolitres by 2020.

“This notable growth will be fostered by the flourishing economic parameters such as increasing GDP growth rates, fast growing urbanization and above all the rising population with a working age demographic set to surpass that of China and India”, said Piyumika Jayasena, analyst at Canadean.

South Africa is the biggest volume contributor, followed by Nigeria and Angola, while in terms of the per capita consumption Seychelles, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon is set to take the lead consuming more than 100 litres by 2020 respectively.

Zambia is also rapidly increasing its consumption and is expected to surpass Mozambique, Congo (Brazzaville), Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and Burundi by 2020, while Kenya and Ethiopia are also seeing positive growth.

“The consumption growth in these markets will be stimulated by the consumer migration from home brewed to more commercially brewed beers and consequently towards premium brands”, adds Jayasena. “It will further be backed by the booming population in these markets. It has been an interesting fact to note that brewers are increasingly engaged in producing more innovative non-malt based products to further enhance the consumer base of the regular beer.”

Alexandre Ricard, Pernod Ricard’s chairman

Several big brewers have invested in the continent in recent years, restructuring their brewing interests to capitalise on its growing potential. Speaking in February last year Alexandre Ricard, chairman of Pernod Ricard, said Africa was its next big growth region, predicting that in 10 to 15 years Africa “will be where Asia is today”.

Diageo recently completed a £117m restructure of its business in South Africa, terminating a series of joint ventures with both Heineken and the Ohlthaver & List group, which holds a majority stake in Namibian Breweries. While in January Anheuser-Busch InBev announced plans to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange following its £71 billion takeover of SABMiller.

“The secondary listing is also an important step towards our proposed combination with SABMiller, and signals our commitment to South Africa, and the African continent”, the company’s chief executive Carlos Brito said at the time.