SABMiller Sells Cassava Beer to Woo African Drinkers

Eugene Shepherd admits he’s no beer expert, but he’ll tell you the bottle of Eagle Lager he treats himself to every week is a step up from the murky home-brews that had been his preferred tipple. He now saves his pocket money all week so on Saturdays he has the 1.20 cedi (61¢) for an Eagle, a beer brewed from locally grown cassava that SABMiller introduced in Ghana in March. “Eagle is my first experience with beers,” the 20-year-old student says as he settles into a plastic chair at a roadside bar in Sogakope, a dusty town of 88,000 stretched along the highway 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the Ghanaian capital of Accra. “I really like this drink.”