Beer in Zambia began as grain beer made in the village. Maize, sorghum and millet were brewed into thick beers; munkoyo, a lightly fermented 'sweet beer' of maize porridge and the pounded roots of the munkoyo plant, is still made in rural Zambia. Under British rule, first of the British South Africa Company and from 1924 as the protectorate of Northern Rhodesia, Africans were barred from European-type drink and the brewing and sale of grain beer was tightly controlled. Municipal beerhalls held a monopoly of 'traditional beer', by the late 1950s mostly brewed in a factory by one firm, and the authorities tried to stamp out an illegal trade run by women brewers. From the mid-1950s protests and boycotts of the halls, many by women, were part of the movement against British rule (Ambler, 1990).
Lager came from the south. South African Breweries (SAB) opened a brewery at Ndola in May 1951, the Castle Brewery. The industrialist Max Heinrichs founded the business that became National Breweries at Kitwe in 1955; by 1960 his Chibuku, later sold as 'Shake-Shake' in cartons, supplied all the urban townships. In 1963 SAB (80%) and Labatt of Canada (20%) formed Northern Breweries with plants at Ndola and Lusaka. Zambia became independent on 24 October 1964; in 1968 the government nationalised the company and split it into Zambian Breweries (Lusaka) and Northern Breweries (Ndola), and Labatt sold its stake in 1988. Mosi Lager, named after Mosi-oa-Tunya, the 'smoke that thunders' (Victoria Falls), has been brewed since the early 1970s, says the company.
Privatisation began in 1994. The Lusaka business, renamed Zambian Breweries and sold to SAB (later SABMiller), listed on the Lusaka Securities Exchange in 1997; in 1999 it bought Northern Breweries at Ndola with the Rhino Lager brand and held most of the clear-beer market. That year SABMiller also bought National Breweries, the Chibuku maker. Zambian Breweries held the Coca-Cola franchise from 2002; AB InBev, which took over SABMiller on 10 October 2016, agreed to sell the bottlers in December 2016. Delta Corporation of Zimbabwe bought 70% of National Breweries on 28 December 2017.
Today Zambian Breweries (Zambrew) brews at Mungwi Road in Lusaka and at Ndola. Its brands are Mosi Lager and Mosi Light, Castle, Castle Lite, Carling Black Label and the cheap Eagle lagers, made with cassava from some 6,000 smallholders (2019). After excise on clear beer fell from 60% to 40% in 2016, the company opened Zambia's first maltings in 2017, a US$33 million plant in Lusaka South with 15,000 tonnes of malt a year. It began a US$90 million plant at Ndola in 2012 and in 2017 a US$30 million programme to lift Ndola from 850,000 to 1.85 million hl; the Lusaka plant was doubled in an expansion announced in July 2022 at US$80 million and finished in December 2023 at US$104 million. Mosi Light, a low-alcohol cassava lager, came out in April 2023.
Craft brewing is new and small. Tiemann Beer in Lusaka (Wild Dog) began in small kettles in 2016 and has canned since 2020; The Brewery at Ciêla (Rebel Beer), east of Lusaka, was founded in 2020, brewed from 2021 and added cans in early 2024. Craft Beer Nomads (2024) counted them as the only microbreweries in the country. Zambian Breweries lost money in 2023 and 2024 (ZMW 673 million, on record volumes) while paying for the expansion, then earned a net profit of ZMW 294.8 million in 2025 on revenue of ZMW 6.11 billion. In February 2026 it cut prices on selected Mosi, Mosi Light and Eagle products, saying that illicit alcohol is about 72% of consumption.
