utywala besiNtu
Traditional Afrikan Beer
authentically brewed by its custodians,
AFRIKAN WOMEN
Homebrewers of Traditional Afrikan Beer are under-resourced and underpaid as they produce and sell our wholesome indigenous beer.
Traditional Afrikan Beer is intricately intertwined with Afrikan culture and primarily brewed by women who have passed down this knowledge for generations. Brewed with indigenous sorghum and millet, along with maize, it is high in B vitamins, amino acids, and probiotics.
For centuries, homebrewing our nutritious and sacred Traditional Afrikan Beer has nurtured communities constituted a major source of self-employment for women across Sub-saharan Afrika. As they resisted displacements and discriminatory policies by the colonial and apartheid governments in the 1900’s, they were met with relentless police violence and our indigenous beer, just like its custodians, was rendered inferior.
Today, the policy frameworks remain limited in recognizing the role of homebrewing Traditional Afrikan Beer for women living in poverty across the country. As a legacy of the stigmatizing past, homebrewers remain under resourced, our indigenous beer endangered, and this history erased.
To remember and reclaim our authentic Afrikanness, we must re-member
(centre, celebrate and protect)
the Afrikan women who have preserved it for centuries.
We are a South African early-stage social venture which aims to enable homebrewers of Traditional Afrikan Beer to produce the customarily nutritious beverage safely, efficiently, and profitably by:
Improving their access to manufacturing, quality assurance and distribution resources;
Expanding the consciousness of individuals and communities on the exclusionary legacies of colonialism and apartheid on Afrikan women; and
Influencing policies on Traditional Afrikan Beer to centre, celebrate and protect Afrikan women as the rightful owners and practitioners of this indigenous knowledge