Rwanda's own beers are older than any brewery. Urwagwa is a banana beer, made by fermenting mashed fruit and served at weddings and celebrations; ikigage is brewed from sorghum. A 2023 survey of 132 producers in four districts found both still made, sorghum beer in Gicumbi and banana beer in Kirehe. Bottled lager came with the Belgians, who ran Ruanda-Urundi from 1916. The Congo brewer Bralima, founded in Léopoldville on 23 October 1923, brewed its first Primus in 1926, opened a brewery for Ruanda-Urundi at Usumbura (Bujumbura) on 23 December 1955, and in November 1957 began a second one at Gisenyi on Lake Kivu.

That second brewery became Bralirwa, Brasseries et Limonaderies du Rwanda. Gisenyi was chosen because it could be reached by water, land and air and because Lake Kivu holds methane. The first bottle of Primus came out of the works in 1959, and Primus had the market to itself for about thirty years. Heineken took 70 per cent in 1971, and a plant bottling Coca-Cola opened in Kigali in May 1974. Mützig was launched in 1987, Guinness was brewed under licence from 1989 and Heineken itself was imported from 1991. In 1994 the genocide and the war badly damaged the works; Bralirwa restarted a few months after the liberation of the country in October 1994, and in 2001 its output was still below half of the pre-1994 level.

In September 2009 the government, which held 30 per cent against Heineken's 70, announced that it would float 25 per cent of Bralirwa on the Rwanda Stock Exchange, the first public offering in the country's history; the shares trade as BLRW. In August 2015 the IFC lent USD 25 million to expand soft drinks and buy maize from 5,000 smallholders. In November 2018 Bralirwa said it would brew Heineken locally instead of importing it, expecting the price to fall from Rwf 1,000 to Rwf 800 a bottle. A new production line, part of a EUR 30 million expansion, was opened at Rubavu on 20 March 2024, and Ethel Emma-Uche became managing director in March 2025. For 2025 Bralirwa reported revenue up 22.1 per cent to Rwf 262,985 million and a profit of Rwf 42,826 million.

The second brewer is Skol Brewery, a subsidiary of the Belgian family firm Unibra, which holds the rights to the Skol brand in Africa; the brand dates from 1964. Set up in 2009, it bought 51 per cent of a private brewery, Brasserie des Mille Collines (80,000 hl a year), and brewed its first Skol Malt in 2010. Gatanu came in 2012, Virunga and Panaché in 2013 and Skol Lager in 2014. The company reached a 25 per cent share of the market in 2017 and passed 500,000 hl a year in 2019, when its second packaging line opened. In 2020 it launched Virunga mineral water in returnable glass bottles. On 16 October 2025 the owner, Thibault Relecom, announced an investment of USD 25-35 million over five years during a visit by the trade minister, Prudence Sebahizi.

Craft brewing began only in 2023. Kweza Craft Brewery in Kigali grew from a 2016 crowdfunding drive led by the Canadian brewer Beau's, which raised USD 100,000 for a brewery owned and run by women. Its first partner withdrew in April 2018, Jessi Flynn became managing director at the end of 2019, and the 1,000-litre brewhouse from China arrived in May 2023. The launch in August 2023, one of the official Umuganura festivities, opened what the press called Rwanda's first microbrewery. Its beers use at least 60 per cent locally malted sorghum, because Rwanda grows no barley and has no malting plant.