Beer is older here than the factories. Traditional pombe was made from bananas, millet, sorghum and maize long before the first brewery: on Ukerewe Island in Lake Victoria the banana beer mpahe was brewed to honour ancestors and pay tribute to chiefs. Even now over 90 per cent of the beer drunk in the country is homemade or sold informally, and a bottled beer costs about six times as much as maize beer. Factory brewing came with the colonial towns: a brewery already stood in Dar es Salaam under German rule, around 1905. The first company of today's industry was Tanganyika Breweries, begun in the early 1930s (1930, 1932 or 1933, depending on the account); Kenya Breweries of Nairobi bought it in 1935 and merged it with itself in 1936 as East African Breweries (EABL).

In 1959 the Dar es Salaam brewery was moved out of EABL into a newly formed Tanganyika Breweries Ltd, which became Tanzania Breweries (TBL) in 1964, when Tanganyika and Zanzibar united. After the Arusha Declaration of 1967 the state took over: it bought 45 per cent of TBL in 1967 and, by one account, full control in 1979 (other sources say 1967 or 1976), and the brewery lost money. Safari Lager was launched in 1977. In 1993 the government sold half of TBL to South African Breweries International for US$22.5 million; output almost tripled in three years, the Mwanza brewery opened in October 1995, and TBL was listed on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange on 9 September 1998.

In 2002 EABL, which had been fighting South African Breweries in East Africa, agreed to a swap: it took 20 per cent of TBL and closed its Kibo brewery at Moshi, and by 2004 TBL had 98 per cent of the market. The other brewers were small: Serengeti Breweries (SBL), incorporated in 1988 as Associated Breweries and renamed in 2002, and from 2005 the Chinese-owned Qingdao-Sino Tanzanian Breweries (King Oryx). The deal broke down in 2009-2010: EABL bought 51 per cent of SBL (approved in July 2010, completed in October) and sold its 20 per cent of TBL in 2011 for US$71.5 million. SBL brews at Dar es Salaam, Mwanza and Moshi, began Guinness and Tusker Malt at Moshi in 2012 and brought Kibo Gold back in June 2012; EABL's holding rose to an effective 72.5 per cent in 2018 and 85 per cent in 2021. TBL opened a brewery at Mbeya in late 2009, bought 60 per cent of the opaque-beer maker Darbrew in 2013 and passed to AB InBev when it took over SABMiller in 2016.

Craft brewing is tiny: TwigaBrew in Arusha, counted as the first craft brewery (2015), and Crafty Dee's in Dar es Salaam, whose Dee's Gold is a hoppy pilsner. Banana drinks are a trade of their own: Raha Beverages of Arusha began in the early 1990s as a backyard banana wine, was incorporated in 1996 as Banana Investments, renamed in 2019, and sells in 14 regions.

TBL, a member of AB InBev, is still the giant, with about 80 per cent of the market by one count and over two thirds by another; SBL's own brands are about 15 per cent of bottled beer. TBL runs breweries at Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza and Mbeya; its malting plant at Moshi, dormant for five years, reopened in 2024, and 2025 was its first full year, with 8,000 tonnes of malt a year from Tanzanian barley. At the annual meeting on 2 July 2026 TBL reported revenue up 13 per cent and operating profit up 35 per cent for 2025; its chairman Leonard Mususa had died on 30 May. On 17 December 2025 Diageo agreed to sell its 65 per cent of EABL, the owner of SBL, to Asahi for US$2.3 billion, with closing expected between July and December 2026.