There comes a day in the life of every old lover of Africa when they finally realise that even the things they believed to be immortal, dusty and faithful like a baobab tree, actually have a board of directors and a registered office far away.
That day has also come for Tusker Beer.
The Kenyan beer par excellence, the one drunk baridi sana under a palm tree, at room temperature in the shade of sacred trees, on the crooked benches of dirt-floor bars, on the endless nights of Watamu, Nairobi, Eldoret or Kisumu, has officially changed hands.
Or rather, it has changed multinationals. From the British Diageo to the Japanese Asahi. A $2.3 billion deal, which, put like that, already evaporates any remaining poetry.

Diageo is exiting the Kenyan market by selling 100% of Diageo Kenya Limited, i.e. control of East African Breweries (EABL), the East African beer giant, valued at a total of $4.8 billion. This includes Tusker, Pilsner, White Cap, the local Guinness, spirits, ready-to-drink beverages, and everything that has accompanied toasts, defeats, weddings and funerals for decades. The closing is scheduled for the second half of 2026, as if even the farewell needed an elegant calendar.
For the industrial record, little changes. Diageo was certainly not a cooperative of artisans wearing straw hats: it was already a global multinational, with London much further away than Tokyo. And in fact, it will remain involved, with long-term licensing agreements to ensure that Guinness and similar brands continue to flow into East African glasses without any existential trauma.

But in the imagination, yes, something is broken. Because Tusker, for many of us, was not a financial acronym: it was a story. It was the story of two brothers who invented a beer and dedicated it to the other, who died from an elephant's tusk. Tusker, in fact. A colonial tragedy turned into a toast. A mourning turned into a label. Africa taking pain and putting it in a bottle, without ever feeling sorry for itself.
It was the beer drunk under a baobab tree, with your feet in the sand, while the world still seemed simple enough to be told by word of mouth, without quarterly reports. It was the silent accomplice of useless conversations, sudden friendships, and the romantic illusions of those who believed that certain things could not be bought.

Today we discover that yes, they could be. And they have been many times. British, Japanese, tomorrow who knows. Maybe Korean, maybe Canadian. It doesn't matter. The beer stays cold, the cap pops the same way, the taste — probably — won't change.
Poetry, however, has never been in the balance sheets. We keep that for ourselves. We African boomers, by choice or by mistake, who continue to drink Tusker as if it were still the product of a tragic and romantic story, and not a PowerPoint slide.
Global capitalism passes by, buys, sells, rationalises. Africa sits under the baobab tree, beer in hand, watching it pass by. And every now and then, so as not to become too cynical, it allows itself the luxury of pretending that nothing has changed.