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Barmen ply their trade at the Ladies Corners Bar in Rumbek, southern Sudan
Since the imposition of Islamic law 25 years ago, having a cool beer in Sudan meant running the risk of 40 lashes. Today SAB Miller is preparing to open a brewery in the south of the country.
The company, one of the largest brewers in the world, plans to create a new beer and is investing £25 million in the plant, in Juba, the capital of south Sudan, which is governed by mainly Christian former rebels.
“We will not only be consuming but producing alcohol,” Samson Kwaje, the Agriculture Minister of south Sudan, said at the launch.
Tension is running high between north and south over disputed oilfields, with both sides apparently arming for war. To the southern politicians, who have an eye on full independence, the new beer is a statement of identity as much as a thirst-quencher.
When the Government in Khartoum introduced Sharia in 1983, alcohol was banned throughout the country. The imposition of Islamic law sparked an uprising in the south, which turned into a 20-year civil war, pitting the Christian rebels against northern Muslims.
In a peace deal concluded in 2005, the rebels won the right to a semi-autonomous secular government. Freed from the shackles of Khartoum's Islamic regime, beer lovers were the first to notice a peace dividend.
Entrepreneurs on bicycles would ride the rutted roads to Uganda, bringing back as many crates of alcohol as they could carry. Today restaurants in Juba offer wines, beers and spirits.
Finding alcohol in northern Sudan, however, remains difficult, though not impossible. In colonial times, British officers would sip pink gins or mugs of Camel beer in Khartoum's network of members-only clubs.
These, along with the British-built Blue Nile Brewery that produced Camel in Khartoum, dried up with the arrival of Sharia.
In recent years one restaurant in Khartoum became famous for serving beer in teapots — one just had to know to order the “special tea”.
Another establishment offered imported Tusker lager from Kenya; waiters would discreetly ask whether any Sudanese would be joining the table, before placing an empty bottle of alcohol-free lager on the table next to a full glass of the real thing.
Even these places have gone dry in the past two years and Westerners now have to rely on contacts at embassies or the UN, who are legally entitled to bring alcohol into the country.
The new brewery in Juba is expected to be up and running by February, taking water from the White Nile and producing soft drinks as well as the first Sudanese beer for many years.
David Raad, an advisor to SAB Miller, said: “The recipe is still being worked on but the market here prefers a lighter, crisper beer — a lager.”
South Sudan was left chronically underdeveloped by the civil war. Three years of peace has begun to change that, with new schools, hospitals and roads, but much of Juba is still given over to tent cities, where aid workers, businessmen and diplomats live and work while waiting for more permanent structures to be built.
Crilly's cool ones
St George
Rich and fruity, packed with hoppy flavour; a fitting taste for a beer that is named after the patron saint of England — and Ethiopia 9/10
Castle
South African beer exported all over the continent. The closest thing to a European lager 7/10
Sorghum beer
Brewed anywhere sorghum grows — that is, everywhere in Africa. Thick and foul and cloudy. Served at room temperature 1/10
Tusker
The pride of Kenya is sadly watery and sour. Best drunk chilled to point where it tastes of nothing 2/10
Senator
Cheap and strong. The choice of Kenyan slum dwellers who don't want to go blind drinking moonshine 5/10
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