The Central African Republic has one industrial brewery and an older drink culture outside it. In the north-west, near Paoua, women brew a millet beer called bilibili, drunk for energy before work in the fields (an ICRC photo of 2007). In the south the favourite is palm wine: the village of Kapou has made it in quantity for decades and sells it in the Bangui market, and in 2021 Africanews noted that it is poured at ceremonies instead of beer, which costs four times as much.
Factory beer came with the French. Bangui was a French post from 1889 and Ubangi-Shari a colony from 1903, and its first brewery was Mocaf (Motte-Cordonnier Afrique), formed in Bangui by a deed of 26 January 1951 with 20 million CFA francs. Half came from the Lille brewers Brasseries et Malteries Motte-Cordonnier, the rest from Armentières and Lille industrialists and the Moroccan firm UNIA of Mazagan, and Edmond and René Motte were its managers. It was to make beer, soft drinks, syrups and ice, and brewing began in 1953 with Mocaf and Super Mocaf. In 1972 it was still the only brewery of the republic, with a capacity of 150,000 hectolitres; it made 101,720 hl of beer in 1970 and about 106,000 hl in 1971.
The owners changed in Europe. Stella Artois made a friendly bid for the parent Motte-Cordonnier in 1970, and Mocaf's own history puts the sale of the plant to Interbrew in 1975, though Interbrew was formed only in 1987. In 1982 Pierre Castel founded the Société Centrafricaine de Boissons, a second and more modern brewery of 100,000 hl, while Mocaf made 160,000 hl with over 300 workers. In 1993 Mocaf passed to Castel's BGI and merged with it, and for almost three decades the group had the market alone, with Mocaf, Castel Beer, 33 Export and the dark Doppel Munich.
The plant, at PK 9 on the Route de M'Baïki in Bimbo, outside Bangui, lived through the wars of the country. When Séléka rebels took Bangui in March 2013 it was invaded and about 150,000 bottles and 40,000 litres of diesel were taken; fighting closed it in early December, and its sales fell by a quarter in a year.
Since 2023 the market has been contested. A company tied to Wagner, First Industrial Company, brews Africa Ti L'Or in Bangui, and flyers accused Mocaf of financing terrorists. On the night of 5-6 March 2023 men threw about thirty petrol bombs into the Mocaf yard: the government called it arson, AFP reported light damage, Brauwelt 50,000 empties and USD 200,000. Mocaf added Chill in May 2023 and Beaufort Lager on 17 July 2024, and in July 2024 Castel said it had put over 12 billion CFA francs into the plant in four years and held 80 per cent of the market; in 2022 it made about 250,000 hl of beer. Local beers ran short in June 2025. On 13 October 2025 Mocaf presented Isenbeck, brewed locally with the help of Warsteiner and sold at 1,250 CFA for 65 cl.
