Cameroon drank long before it had a brewery. In the north the everyday drink is bil-bil, a sorghum beer sold in street cabarets and called by a different name in each ethnic group; it is said to make up about 80% of the alcohol drunk there. In the south and west the old drink is palm wine, matango, made from fresh sap, sweet at first and stronger as it ferments; at the royal courts of the Grassfields it went with ritual, hospitality and diplomacy. Cameroon was a German colony from 1884 to 1916, then split between France and Britain, and the first brewery came only after the war.

Société Anonyme des Brasseries du Cameroun (SABC) was founded in Douala on 3 February 1948 by the Brasseries et Glacières d'Indochine, later Brasseries et Glacières Internationales (BGI). In 1950 it brewed Bull Beer, the first beer made in Cameroon, and in 1952 it launched Beaufort. A first beer bottling line opened at Yaoundé in 1966, then breweries at Garoua (1968), Yaoundé (1970) and Bafoussam (1974). By 1971 SABC had a beer capacity of 1.3 million hl, the largest brewery in French-speaking black Africa.

The monopoly ended in the early 1970s. Guinness Cameroun started brewing in Douala in 1970, with a stout unit of 60,000 hl, and the Union Camerounaise de Brasseries (UCB), founded by the businessman Joseph Kadji Defosso, began production there in 1971-72. Castel bought BGI in January 1990. In the unrest of 1991-92 SABC plants were looted over rumours that President Biya had a stake in the company, and UCB reached nearly 30% of the market, only to fall to about 3.5% by 2010. SABC hit a record 77.5% in 2007, with 3.4 million hl. In 2008 it took over SIAC Isenbeck, the failing Cameroon venture of Germany's Warsteiner. SABC has bottled and sold Heineken beers since 2005, and Heineken sold its 8.75% of SABC to BGI in 2020 for about 64.5 million euros.

In July 2022 Diageo agreed to sell Guinness Cameroun to Castel for 389 million pounds; the CEMAC competition authorities cleared it on 28 March 2023, and on 11 July 2024 the CEMAC court threw out UCB's challenge. On 13 December 2022 SABC renamed itself Société Anonyme des Boissons du Cameroun and announced a 200 billion FCFA plan for 2023-27. New lines of 35,000 bottles an hour opened at Yaoundé in 2024, Douala in March 2025 and Bafoussam on 11 April 2025. Its 2025 sales were about 483 billion FCFA, the largest of any Castel subsidiary in Africa. On 2 October 2026 shareholders approved the absorption of Guinness Cameroun, to act as one company from 1 January 2027, and on 9 October the company launched Mboa, a ginger lager. In 2024 Cameroon brewed 9.3 million hl, fifth in Africa.

UCB, with about 16% of the market, has commissioned a new brewery at Moungo near Douala (about 2 million hl, room for 15 lines), renamed Kadji Beer simply Kadji on 2 July 2026 and aims at 5 million hl by 2030. Two newcomers followed: Brasaf, of the billionaire Samuel Foyou, launched its first beer in June 2022 and temporarily suspended about thirty staff in July 2023; Swiss African Premium Beverage (SAPB) at Kendeck near Douala (60,000 hl) won a bronze medal for its ROX pilsner at the African Beer Cup in Cape Town on 24 May 2025, the first Cameroonian entry.