Associate Editors

This paper offers a brief historical survey of drinking cultures in Africa, from the nineteenth century to the present. It questions the notion of a pre-colonial past of harmonious ‘integrated’ drinking, and suggests that while there has been substantial change in drinking cultures there are also substantial continuities, notably in ideas of temperance. Striking features of change have been the introduction of large-scale commercial production – which has brought increasingly globalized marketing strategies to Africa; the commoditization of ‘traditional’ beverages; and the growth in consumption of spirits, often produced on an artisanal basis by illicit small-scale distillers. The last decade has also seen the increasing diversion of non-beverage industrial spirits into beverage use. The paper argues that there is no clear evidence of an overall ‘drinking crisis’ affecting the whole of Africa, and that it is not safe to assume that modern drinking is necessarily worse than pre-colonial drinking. But the paper also notes that there are substantial gaps in our knowledge of current drinking cultures in Africa, and that there is clear evidence of ‘risky’ drinking in several parts of Africa. This may not be a completely new phenomenon, but it does present public health challenges.