OCTOBER 31, 2015 19

14 OCTOBER 31, 2015

Saturday Monitor
WWW.MONITOR.CO.UG

special report

Consumption. With 88.6 per cent of the alcohol consumption in Uganda unregulated, it has
become increasingly challenging to get the bigger picture of how much alcohol Ugandans take,
unless we are aware of the alcoholic content of
our varied local brew, writes Mathias Wandera.

special report

How much alcohol are we taking?

ganda is Africas alcoholism capital

according to World Health Organisations
Global status report on alcohol and health
2014. The study, which focused on people of 15
years and above, puts Uganda among the top
drinking nations in the world, on the continent
and undoubtedly, well ahead of all our regional
counterparts.
With drinkers alone as the focus group, the report says that on average, each drinker in Uganda
guzzles a whopping 51.7 grammes of pure alcohol
on a daily basis. Annually, each Ugandan drinker
consumes 23.7 litres of pure alcohol.
But Uganda is not exactly a lone drinker in the
region, Rwanda and Burundi could come in as
Ugandas drinking friends given that each drinker
in the two countries pumps in 22 litres of pure
alcohol every year. This leaves Kenya and Tanzania as the somewhat sober nations in the region,
standing at 18.9 and 18.4 litres respectively.
Putting Africa into perspective, Nigerians and
South Africans too seem to be holding the bottle
with both hands, recording 23.1 and 27.1 litres respectively. Some of the traditionally renowned
drinkers in the world like Russia and Germany
stood at 22.3 and 14.7 respectively. Croatia (15.1),
France (12.9), Nepal (28.8), Moldova (25.4).
In the report, the licensed alcoholic beverages
are beer, wine and spirits. And for a country like
Germany, all the alcohol consumed is the regulated type that falls within the boundaries of
these three beverages, and given that the alcoholic content in these drinks can be measured
with certainty, it is almost safe to say that Germanys recorded consumption of 14.7 is accurate.
For Ugandas case, however, only 9.4 per cent of
the alcohol consumed is regulated and licensed
as beer, 1.9 per cent spirits and a very tiny 0.1 per
cent is wine. The remaining 88.6 per cent is of
the unlicensed alcohol, classified in the report
as others.
This 88.6 per cent is where all the locally made
brew such as Malwa, Kwete, and Tonto are classified. These are the most widely consumed, partly
because of the fact that they are often cheaper
than licensed alcohol. But this is mainly as a result of the social-cultural drinking practices that
are so deeply rooted in Uganda.
Malwa for example is known to hold so much
significance among the Itesot, where it is called
Ajono. To them, a pot of Ajono is not only what
they desire to make merry at weddings or celebrate the birth of a new born child, it is also what
consoles bruised souls when it is time to mourn
the loss of a loved one.
To us, Ajono is not just a drink, it is a lifestyle,
proclaims 23-year- old Isaac Omachi, an Itesot
and now a resident of Mbuya, a Kampala suburb.
Back home in Tororo, we take Ajono to celebrate
a good harvest or a long-standing friendship.
We take Ajono to reconcile feuding siblings or
friends. We also take Ajono to just be happy. It is
even used in the naming of children.
Kwete also holds similar relevance, but mainly
among the Karimojong. Tonto, also called
Mwengebigele, is a delicacy in the banana region
of Uganda, majorly holding traditional significance among the Baganda where calabashes of
the brew are by some unwritten rule a must composition of the bride price package.
It is consumed mainly at introduction ceremonies and other traditional gatherings.
Kasese and Lira-lira, on the other hand, are not
aligned to a particular tribe, rather it has come to
be a reservation for the urban poor who cannot
afford to buy the licensed and obviously expensive spirits but who still crave the feeling of a
fiery liquid searing their lips then their throats
and finally exploding in their tummy.
How much alcohol is in unlicensed?
The fact that most of the alcohol consumed in
Uganda is unlicensed has for a long time been the

TESTING FOR
ALCOHOLIC
CONTENT IN
LOCAL ALCOHOL
As a matter of procedure, the samples
that we delivered to the laboratory to
be tested for ethyl alcohol content
had to first be categorically classified
as either malt cereal beverages, beer,
wine or spirits. This is because each
category has its own standard range
of expected alcoholic content upon
which the tested beverage can be
judged on whether it passes the test
or not.
The malt cereal beverages are
basically non-alcoholic drinks, the
ones loosely termed as juice and
their expected alcohol by volume
content has to be a mere 0.25 per
cent or less. Given that all the four
samples we delivered were alcoholic
beverages, we did not have any malt
cereal beverages and thus all our
samples had to be tagged either as
beer, wine or spirits.
According to Maximilia Nakitto, a
senior certification officer with the
UNBS, the question as of what is
beer, wine or a spirit is a matter of
the raw material used to make the
beverage and the production process
employed.
For the case of beers, the raw
materials have to be cereals, usually
flavoured with hops and the process
used is fermentation. Wines on the
other hand are usually made from
grapes but because of innovation,
we still term a drink as a wine if any
other fruit is used and produced
still using fermentation. For spirits,
however, the production process
should be distillation, particularly
fractional distillation and the raw
material is normally cane sugar,
Nakitto explains.

Men enjoy malwa partly because it is cheaper than licensed alcohol.

basis of debate on how much alcohol Ugandans
do actually consume. This is because with 88.6
per cent of the consumption unregulated, it
becomes increasingly challenging to get the
bigger picture of how much alcohol Ugandans
consume, unless of course you are aware of the
alcoholic content of our varied local brew.
It is for this reason that Saturday Monitor
embarked on a fact finding mission to bring
you the truth on the alcoholic content that
rests within your preferred local drink.

LOCAL BREW VERSUS BEER

Malwa (6.91%) per litre
1 litre is equivalent to 1 beers
of bell
Kwete (4.1%)
1 litre is equivalent to 2 bottles of
Tusker malt
Tonto (11.5%)
1 litre is equivalent to 5 clubs
Kasese (39.7%)
1 litre is equivalentto 10 bottles of Guiness
500mls is equivalent to 10 sachets of
Uganda waragi

Much as there are many locally made alcoholic beverages across the nation,
n, we zeroed in on the four most popular local
al drinks;
Malwa, Kwete, Tonto and Kasese. And
nd to ensure that the results are a true representation
entation
of the alcohol you usually consume, we picked
out the samples from some of Kampalas
las most
popular outlets.
Kiswa slum in Bugolobi, a Kampala
la suburb, is where most of Kampalas Malwa
alwaa is
brewed, while Kibuli and Namuwongo
go are

Rwanda

Kenya

Burundi

Tanzania

Zambia

23.7 L 22 L
18.1 L 22 L
18.4 L 22 L

WWW.MONITOR.CO.UG

the best two places Kampalas drinking

population flocks to find Kwete and Kasese. Tonto on the other hand is brewed
and sold in Bulange, Mengo.
We picked the samples from these respective locations and delivered them
to the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) laboratories in Nakawa to
be tested for alcoholic content.
Malwa
Widely made using millet and produced by fermentation, Malwa is classified as a beer. In fact, as Nakitto further
points out: Malwa is particularly an
opaque beer. These are beers consumed
without the mash being filtered out.
Beers as per the standards employed
by UNBS should have alcoholic content
that lies between 1.5 and 8.0 per cent.
So where exactly in this range is Malwa
placed? Well, it cannot be very low, considering the experience of those that
have been keen enough to pay attention
to the reaction that comes with Malwa.
By 5pm on a Monday evening, Bosco
Edunyu is already a resident at his favourite Malwa joint in Kiswa. It is a wooden
structure of fair size, the wood only covering the downer fractions, leaving the
entire upper section open for aeration
as is the case for most such joints. The
roof is made of old and rusty corrugated
iron sheets that are now a dark shade
of brown. This, however, does not seem
even the least bit a concern for the drinking population at the joint.
As he raises his voice to cut through
the sounds of Jose Chameleons Valu
Valu that are now blaring from the
nearby speaker, Edunyu points out that
the house is only starting to pick up. By
7pm people will be sharing seats.
Eight men sit in one circle surrounding a big pot of Malwa, engaged in loud
banter and each one holding his own
drinking straw, one end to their mouth
and the other dipped in the pot. Edunyu,
however, is not part of the pack. He sits
alone a few yards from the main circle
nursing a small pot of Malwa of his own.
As he reveals, this is how he usually likes
to see off the sun-setalone, just him
and a pot of malwa.
I take all sorts of alcohol but mostly
Malwa. It is cheap. This, for example, is
only Shs1500. He says pointing at the
small pot before him. If I am to buy beer
from the shops, I will buy a maximum of
two bottles because it is expensive. But
I will not feel anything. For Malwa, however, this pot alone will shake me up.
Well, Edunyu is not bluffing when he
says he finds more magic in a small pot
of Malwa than in a couple of beer bottles.
Going by our results, Malwa had alcoholic content of 6.91 per cent. This means
it has way more alcohol than most of the
licensed beers on market.
With this percentage of ethyl alcohol, it
means that someone who consumes the
smallest pot of Malwa, which is usually
one litre will have consumed the same
amount of pure alcohol as someone who
takes almost one and a half bottles of

CONSUMPTION (PER YEAR

YEAR)
R)
Uganda

Saturday Monitor

A woman
brewing
Kasese
waragi

Tonto

Kwete
Kwete, just like Malwa, is also an opaque
beer made from cereal and produced by the
process of fermentation. From our results, the
alcoholic content we found in Kwete is 4.1 per
cent, which is so close to that found in Bell
and Tusker Lite (4.0 per cent).
Usually, the avid consumers of Kwete procure
it in one litre mineral water bottles and small
5-litre jerrycans. With a 4.1 per cent alcohol by
volume content, someone who gets knocked
out by two bottles of Tusker Lite will still find

bell lager since alcoholic content in

Bell is 4 per cent. Double your Malwa
consumption to two litres and you
will have consumed an equivalent of
seven bottles of Bell lager.
The norm, however, especially
where fairly large groups of people
are involved has always been to buy
a full 20-liter jerrycan of Malwa and
just make merry. This is the same
thing as taking 69 bottles of Bell
(about 2.8 crates). It is also the exact
amount of pure alcohol derived from
consuming a little over 49 bottles
of Nile Special (almost two crates)
given that Nile Special has alcoholic
content of 5.6 per cent.
Seated a metre away in the main
circle, Joseph Etiang does not hesitate to throw in his two pence on the
strength of Ajono. I have not taken
many beers that are as strong as
Malwa. In fact, the one in this town,
especially that I have taken at Kasoli
stage down in Kitintale and in Makerere is not strong compared to what
is brewed back home in Tororo. The
other side, the same pot Edunyu is
taking will spin you around in circles
when you are just half way.
The variation in alcoholic content
in Malwa, at least according to Hellen Apolot, who runs a Malwa joint
in Mbuya, is usually a question of the
maturity stage.

himself on the floor if they consume a litre of

Kwete because in both cases they will have
consumed the same amount of pure alcohol.
And if it is the same person in question, then
they had better not attempt to guzzle a 5-litre
jerrycan of Kwete because this will set the
world around them in top-speed motion.
The alcohol consumed in 5 litres of Kwete
is equivalent to that found in 10 bottles of
Tusker Lite.
For someone whose beer of choice is the Nile
Gold, which comes in a 330ml bottle with
alcoholic content of 4.8 per cent, five bottles
of this beer will be the equivalent of galloping
a standard 2-litre jag of Kwete.

Obviously, Malwa that has been around longer is stronger due to the extended fermentation. But the strength could also be affected by
the amount of millet used.

Kasese
Unlike beers and wines which are made
by fermentation, Kasese is a spirit, made by
distillation. But it is not just the production
process that sets spirits apart from beers and
wines, spirits are also unmatched in regards
to alcoholic content.
Going by the standards adopted by UNBS,
alcoholic beverages that are classified as spirits or gins must register ethyl alcohol content
of 37.5 per cent or more. And true to this, the
alcoholic content we
e found in Kasese was 39.7
per cent, implying that
hat for any volume of Kasese at hand, a whole
ole 39.7 per cent of it will
make for nothing else
lse but pure alcohol!
At this percentage,
ge, even the consumer of a
very strong beer like
ke Guinness foreign extra
stout (7.5 per cent alcohol content) will require more than 10 bottles to match up to just
one litre of Kasese.
Of late, perhaps as a result of smaller pocket-size, the trend among
mong ordinary consumers
of licensed spirits in
n Uganda is the consumption of the cheaperr 50ml sachet of Uganda
Waragi and the also
o popular Bekham gin,
both carrying a 40 per cent ethyl alcohol content. Such consumer will need
almost 20 such sachets,
chets, also called
akavera, to be at level
el with whomever consumer has it in them to
guzzle a litre of kasese.
ese.
But given the lethal
thal nature of Kasese, however,
wever,
people rarely procure
ure a
litre. Usually, Kasese
ese
is sold in a Fanta botttle which is 500ml.
l.
This is the equivalent
alent
of taking 10 sachets
ts of
Uganda waragi. It is
also the same amount
ount
consumed when one
bottles
off th
the
ne drinks 1.4 bo
ottlle
ot
ess o
he
350ml bottle of Uganda
Waragi.
d W
i

Made from fruits, particularly bananas and produced by fermentation, Tonto also often referred
to as mwenge bigere or alcohol produced by feet is
a wine. Traditionally, it was produced by kneading
bananas in a boat-like container using ones feet until
a clear liquid is produced.
Going by the standard adopted by UNBS, wines
should contain alcoholic content that falls within the
range of 6.5 and 16.5 per cent, implying that usually,
and contrary to popular opinion, wines are stronger
than beers, something 47-year-old David Katerega
does not consider news.
He is in Bulange buying Tonto when we find him.
You can tell from his convenience while haggling with
the sellers that he is a routine customer. They even
allow him a few gallops on the bottle as a way of testing.
As Katerega reveals: Tonto is sweet but very fiery.
It is perfect for the kind of consumers who take alcohol to purposefully get drunk.
Unlucky for us, however, the Tonto we secured from
the same popular outlet in Bulange turned out not to
be the fiery concoction Katerega sings praises for. In
fact, the alcoholic content contained in it was a mere
0.07 per cent, disqualifying it as an alcoholic beverage
and putting it in the category of malt cereal beverages
or the common juice.
Why low content?
According to Nakito, such anomalies can arise
in cases where the beverage has not been allowed
enough time to ferment. Alternatively, this could
also be the case when the amount of yeast used is not
enough to convert the sugars into alcohol.
Where the production process is on point, however,
Tonto is expected to take on its expected range of
somewhere between 6.5 and 16.5 per cent, the safest figure to work with in this case being the middle
ground of this range which is 11.5 per cent.
With this content, a 1-litre bottle of Tonto will carry
the exact amount of pure alcohol as five bottles of
Club Pilsner since Club has a 4.5 per cent alcoholic
content. For a 2.5 litre calabash, however, the total
number of Club bottles held in it will be 12.7.
Considering most licensed wines on market, Tonto
does not have absolute superiority over them. Hibiscus and Altar wine for example, both products of
Bella wines are packaged in a 750ml bottle and have
alcoholic content of 13 per cent. This means that, with
ethyl alcohol content of 11.5 per cent, a 5-liter jerrycan
of Tonto will be the equivalent of just about six bottles
of Altar, Hibiscus or Golden wine.
For the case of the popular Nederburg wine from
South Africa, a 2.5 litres calabash will impose on its
consumer the same alcoholic burden as 2.7 bottles of
the Nederburg wine.