When I was growing up, Ethiopia was one of those nations with the hallmark of being incessantly near collapse. Civil war unending. The famine. Now there is beer:
The Beemnet bar is one of those places in Addis Ababa which attracts Ethiopians of all ages. Increasingly locals are going here for breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks - a sign of the country’s increasing purchasing power. On Friday and Saturday nights, the terrace and bar is packed with people drinking beer and trying out their new dance moves before heading to a club after midnight. Beer is becoming increasingly popular among the growing Ethiopian middle class. In fact beer consumption in Ethiopia - Africa’s second-most populous country, is expected to grow by about 15 percent every year for the next five years. According to a report carried out last year by Access Capital, an Addis Ababa-based research group, this growth in consumption is very much in line with Ethiopian population levels and economic growth rates.
As in the Mid-east, in Sri Lanka and in the southern Sudan, this rise in beer production and consumption in Ethiopia is a hallmark of peace. Even as - or is it because - they seem to prefer the "jumbo" size glass.
A little oddly, the US Embassy did a study of the Ethiopian beer market in 1998 at the time the breweries were denationalized. It notes that it was the Czechs and Slovak Velvet Revolutionaries back in 1993 who created the Bedele brewery Heineken recently bought, outbidding Carlsberg. You can allegedly find the beer in Canada, a nation not known for its fondness of monkey gibbon... or lemur... well, it's very likely a Coquerel Sifaka branded beer. [Update: unless the connection is about Zaboomafoo!]
Comments
The Beer Nut - May 11, 2011 7:16 AM
We get a few Ethiopian beers around here. You can tell they're African by the thickness of the glass: our disposable culture doesn't seem to have hit the Dark Continent in any big way yet.
WTF - May 11, 2011 11:09 AM
What the fuck does "monkey branded beer" mean??? Are you even aware how offensive that is?
Alan - May 11, 2011 11:18 AM
Well, see the monkey on the label?
But let's see what I can do as I look and I think that is a form of gibbon.
Alan - May 11, 2011 11:26 AM
There. It's a Coquerel Sifaka branded beer. Propithecus coquereli. But I do not understand the connection if that is the case as that species only exists in northern Madagascar.
The Beer Nut - May 11, 2011 12:48 PM
Black cap, puffy tail, native to Ethiopia: I'd put money on it being a colobus monkey, specifically an Abyssinian black-and-white colobus.
Craig - May 11, 2011 2:19 PM
I'm going with Nut on this one (Beer Nut, not the other other nut.) The label resembles the Abyssian black and white Colobus, rather than the lemur.
Surprisingly, the mention of a simian graphic is offensive, but dropping an unsolicited f-bomb on someone else's blog isn't. Hmmmmm....interesting.
Alan - May 11, 2011 2:22 PM
I am happy to receive the offended notes of others. Especially when the image is, in fact, of a monkey. I am comfortable in my ability to note the existence of one monkey in a diagram without offending let alone being racist but happy to hear the opinions of others.
Craig - May 11, 2011 3:01 PM
So, in fact, you are admitting the exsistance of monkeys? I just want to make sure I'm not dealing with some one who is anti-simintic.
Alan - May 11, 2011 3:37 PM
You are a bad person.
Craig - May 11, 2011 3:43 PM
C'mon... That took a good bit of crafting, to get that joke to go my way.
Knut Albert - May 12, 2011 8:26 AM
Expected to grow by 15 per cent for the next five years, eh? How much did it grow the last five years? This is like the brewing dinosaurs predicting their sales of low carb beers.
Egon Blechle - May 16, 2011 2:31 AM
Guys,
the Logo of Paulaner Beer is a monk, would anybody be offended if somebody did in fact call it a monky Brand??? Hehehe