All of the destinations in Africa were volatile in terms of how much was imported. The Canary Islands are the only place where the volumes were reasonably constant.
Not sure what was going on in Nigeria. Where imports of UK beer went from fuck all to quite a lot and then fell back to fuck all.
Overall, exports of beer to Africa were in serious decline in the 1970s, other than that weird bump in sales to Nigeria.
UK beer exports to Africa 1971 - 1975 | |||||
Country of Destination | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 |
Canary Islands | 1,341 | 1,196 | 1,112 | 1,199 | 1,848 |
Egypt | 74 | 16 | 288 | 261 | 233 |
Gambia | 2,085 | 1,657 | 2,321 | 2,705 | 3,773 |
Liberia | 2,978 | 903 | 80 | 61 | 11 |
Nigeria | 96 | 1,074 | 915 | 4,592 | 74,985 |
St. Helena | 1,775 | 1,765 | 2,401 | 2,073 | 1,691 |
Seychelles | 3,068 | 2,126 | 68 | 57 | 208 |
South Africa | 1,528 | 959 | 1,484 | 1,466 | 1,879 |
Total Africa. | 12,945 | 9,696 | 8,669 | 12,414 | 84,628 |
Source: | |||||
“The Brewers' Society Statistical Handbook 1980” page 15. |
UK beer exports to Africa 1976 - 1980 | |||||
Country of Destination | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979 | 1980 |
Canary Islands | 1,464 | 2,365 | 1,921 | 1,940 | 1,241 |
Egypt | 3,447 | 1,719 | 648 | 4 | 55 |
Gambia | 4,429 | 2,632 | 378 | 61 | 54 |
Liberia | 73 | — | — | 6 | |
Nigeria | 59,787 | 74,810 | 1,985 | 46 | 111 |
St. Helena | 1,105 | 1,238 | 667 | 576 | 388 |
Seychelles | 305 | 683 | 453 | 187 | 65 |
South Africa | 1,025 | 1,286 | 801 | 384 | 128 |
Total Africa. | 71,635 | 84,733 | 6,853 | 3,204 | 2,042 |
Source: | |||||
“The Brewers' Society Statistical Handbook 1980” page 15. |
4 comments:
This looks the same as last Friday.
Nigerians drink a lot of Guinness and they had at least one brewery there for a long time. I wouldn't be surprised if the huge swing in imports had to do with something like a brewery temporarily closing and then relocating or being retrofitted -- maybe due to fire or something like that.
I was wondering if it was tied to the 1970s oil boom in Nigeria as the government gradually acquired larger and larger stakes in companies like Shell-BP and Mobil and massively increased production and exploration. Was there an influx of British oil workers into Nigeria during the middle of the 70s that could explain the surge in UK beer imports?
Don't forget they had the small matter of the civil war (Biafra) from 1967-70 which no doubt will have depressed things a bit. Then you had increasing oil production plus the big spike in oil prices after 1973, which meant the economy boomed in the mid 1970s, then things got a bit dodgy again.
Guinness built their first brewery in Lagos in 1961, so I guess it's plausible that it built up demand but if it got trashed in the civil war then they had to meet demand with imports until they were able to get the brewery up and running again?
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