At the launch party for Kweza Craft Brewery in Kigali, performers open the proceedings with traditional music and dance, while government officials rub shoulders with thirsty visitors looking for something other than Rwanda’s ubiquitous Lagers. But here in the heart of Central Africa, just a few degrees south of the equator, we’re not just celebrating this landlocked country’s first microbrewery. For Kweza’s managing director Jessi Flynn, there’s a bigger story to be shared.
“We are the first country in the world whose craft beer industry is being started by women,” she says, pausing to let her words sink in. Rwandan women have always been in charge when it comes to traditional brewing, but the notion that this country—a tiny state surrounded by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi—might be something of a pioneer in the beer world should be a source of great pride for its citizens.
In fact, Kweza’s journey is full of “firsts” and “onlys.” The idea began seven years ago in the unlikely location of Vankleek Hill, Canada, at Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company, as that company’s co-founder Steve Beauchesne recalls. “It was our 10-year anniversary and we were in a nice place to do something really special,” he says. “We started Beau’s with the belief that beer tastes better when you can feel good about drinking it, and while we were doing a lot for our local community, we wanted to do something meaningful on a bigger scale.”
In a moment of serendipity, a woman called Josephine “Fina” Uwineza contacted the Ontario Craft Brewers Association around that time. A Rwandan citizen with close ties to Canada and a successful entrepreneur in the food and beverage sector, Uwineza had an idea to set up the first craft brewery in her home country. The dream was that the brewery would be owned and run by women, not only employing women for the brewing operations, but sourcing ingredients from women who rely on small-scale agriculture to support their families in rural areas. (When contacted for this article, Uwineza declined to comment.)
“We are the first country in the world whose craft beer industry is being started by women.”
Beauchesne thought it sounded like a good fit, though it would present obvious challenges. “It was so much more out of our comfort zone than we had intended,” he says. “We flew down to Rwanda to meet Fina and to check out the business climate. The last thing we wanted was to start a project that had no chance of succeeding. I came back inspired. And also scared shitless.”
Burying his fears, Beauchesne dove into the project, launching a crowdfunding campaign which reached its $100,000 target within two months. Over the next year, locations were scouted around Kigali, business plans were drawn up, and the team at Beau’s started working on recipes using traditional Rwandan brewing ingredients, including cassava and bananas.
In May 2017, the name of the brewery was finalized and the campaign’s backers received their merch bearing the name Kweza—a Kinyarwanda word meaning both “to ripen” and “to build someone up through compliments.” The team felt it perfectly encompassed Uwineza’s goals to make beer with locally harvested ingredients and also to support and uplift the local community.
“We flew down to Rwanda… I came back inspired. And also scared shitless.”
But in April 2018, Beauchesne received a call that ripped the heart from the project: Uwineza had to back out, throwing the entire idea into doubt. “We’d raised $100,000 for a project miles and miles away and now had no CEO,” he says “It was a major unanticipated crisis.”
Employees at Beau’s approached Beauchesne to urge him to return all funds raised, with one staff member even threatening to expose him for fraud. “That was the low moment,” he says. “This person had been so passionate but was now so convinced that it was going to fail.”
Everyone assumed that would be the end of what had been dubbed “The Rwanda Craft Brewery Project,” but the negativity spurred Beauchesne on. “Nothing motivates me more than someone telling me I’ve failed,” he says.
The problems were too large for one person to solve—especially someone living 7,000 miles away. Beauchesne started calling everyone he knew in Rwanda and asking for their contacts. Eventually someone told him about an American woman living in Kigali who was “really into beer.” Enter Jessi Flynn.
Originally from Boston, Flynn had arrived in Rwanda in 2017 on a six-week project to design an agricultural campus. More than a year later she was still there, working as one of only two landscape architects in the country. She was also an avid homebrewer. On discovering the lack of variety in Rwanda’s beer market, she had asked her father to send over her brewing kit from the U.S.
Beauchesne thought she might rescue the floundering project, even just temporarily. She agreed to get on board and keep things afloat until a full-time CEO could be found.
“We had twenty to thirty crises over the next few months,” he says. “And after every call I’d hang up and say ‘Oh God, please don’t let her quit.’”
He didn’t need to worry. Flynn officially joined the team as managing director at the end of 2019, a full year after first talking to Beauchesne. Under her leadership, Kweza has come to fruition.
It was not an easy ride. Setting up a business in Africa is rarely straightforward, and an alcohol-related business brings even more challenges. Since Kweza was the first of its kind in the country, legislation for microbreweries wasn’t yet in place. In essence, Flynn and her team had to create the reams of red tape that they would later need to crawl through.
Other challenges followed. The company that had initially pledged the brewhouse went bankrupt, and a second-hand system later imported from South Africa turned out to be unusable. Ingredients were similarly difficult to source locally. There is no barley in the country—and no malting plant, even if the grain were grown. “It’s a rotating buffet of challenges,” Flynn says. “I can’t even buy a hydrometer here.”
But the challenges Central Africa presents have helped create the brewery’s identity. “It all just keeps shaping what Kweza is. If we can’t get the equipment, we will manufacture the first ‘Made in Rwanda’ brewhouse,” she says. “If we can’t get malt, we’ll work out how to malt our own grain or find other alternatives.”
In fact, embracing local ingredients is a core part of Kweza’s ethos, dating back to Uwineza’s original vision for the brewery. From those initial R&D batches at Beau’s to countless brew days on Flynn’s 5-gallon homebrew setup, the idea has always been to use as much local produce as possible, including sorghum, honey, and bananas.
“Around 80% of Rwandans rely on agriculture as a means of income, so it’s really important to us to support local farmers,” says Flynn. There is also a financial incentive to buy local, with a 60%-70% excise tax slapped onto imported ingredients, compared to 30% for local produce.
One of Kweza’s core goals is to support women farmers, with the five-year plan being to buy around 12 tons of sorghum per month. Brewing with sorghum presents different challenges than brewing with barley, so Flynn has spent time consulting brewers around the continent who are working with high percentages of traditional grains. But what she really wanted was a local expert—and it turned out there was one right in her home.
While working as Flynn’s housekeeper, Josephine Uwase couldn’t help hearing all the chatter about making beer from sorghum. Hailing from a small village east of Kigali, Uwase has been brewing traditional sorghum beer—known as ikigage—for 25 years. She set up a business brewing beer, saving enough money to be able to move into the city, along with her mother, her fellow brewer and mentor. She still sells her ikigage and is known in her local community for having a “good arm,” the highest compliment in traditional Rwandan brewing.
The winding road leading to Kigali Farms in Musanze, two hours northwest of Kigali, quickly makes you understand how Rwanda gained its moniker “the land of a thousand hills.” On it, we pass countless bicycles laden with increasingly unlikely loads: bags of firewood, tree trunks, glass doors, and, of course, beer. Beer is everywhere in Rwanda. Bars are emblazoned with the colors and branding of their sponsoring brewery, beer ads make up a key part of the average Rwandan village landscape, and beer deliveries are made by well-toned bicycle riders who climb the hills with four or five full crates strapped to the backs of their bikes.
I’m fascinated by the omnipresence of beer and hope to try a few local Lagers, but Flynn first wants us to taste something with a longer pedigree. We arrive at the farm to a chorus of drumming and a demonstration of the traditional ikinimba dance, which the entire village has turned out to watch. Once the music dies down, Uwase demonstrates the traditional ikigage process, beginning with the malting procedure.
First, the sorghum is soaked overnight, before being mixed with ash. “We add this as an enzyme for the malt, I think,” Uwase says, half-smiling. (In Africa, it is typical for a brewer of traditional beer to have absolute mastery of the process without necessarily understanding the science behind it. Brewing knowledge is passed down generationally, typically from mother to daughter, aunt to niece, or grandmother to granddaughter. The steps have always been the same, and they work, so it doesn’t really matter how or why they work.)
“I didn’t think twice about it, and I didn’t look anywhere else. I knew this was it.”
The sorghum and ash mixture is covered with banana leaves and left to germinate for three days before being dried outside, under the equatorial sun. Uwase demonstrates traditional stone milling, which grinds the sorghum down to a powder ready for brewing, then talks us through the brewing process. Sadly, we can’t taste any of her finished beer here, but Flynn has some commercial ikigage for us to try. It’s extremely acidic, with a slight vinegary note, and initially I am not a fan. But the second sip is better than the first, and the third better still. It’s much crisper, fresher, and drier than traditional beers from southern Africa. And at 7% ABV, it has much more of a kick.
We also get to taste urwagwa, a traditional banana wine whose popularity goes a long way toward explaining the banana trees that are a core feature of the Rwandan landscape. The urwagwa is from Yuliyana, a woman-owned start-up based in Kigali. It’s a potent tipple that warms the throat as it goes down. Slightly sherry-like with a touch of balsamic and some background smoke, it’s complex, and as viscous as cough syrup.
Along with another ikigage brewer, Vestine Ntirampeba, Uwase is helping to adapt the traditional malting process to a larger scale. Malting will take place at Kigali Farms, which is owned by Laurent Demuynck, the former CEO of Brewery Ommegang in New York. The malt will then be transported—by truck, not bike—to Kweza’s brewery in the southeastern part of Kigali. Although Flynn was heavily involved in early recipe design, she has largely handed over the reins to Tapiwa Charosa. Originally from Zimbabwe, Charosa graduated from the University of Zimbabwe with a food science degree in 2020. She became interested in brewing after a university fermentation project related to urwagwa.
With only two craft breweries in Zimbabwe, Charosa’s options were limited. She spent two years working in the soft drinks industry, studying for the Institute of Brewing and Distilling’s Diploma in Brewing in her spare time and trying to prepare herself for a career switch.
“I knew I was going to go into brewing,” she says. “I just didn’t know where or when.”
One evening she found a Facebook post from Flynn, who was seeking a brewer to join the team.
“I didn’t think twice about it, and I didn’t look anywhere else,” Charosa says. “I knew this was it.” She moved to Kigali in September 2022 and started brewing straightaway. “Jessi taught me everything I know,” she says, adding that Flynn soon stepped back and trusted her with Kweza’s beers. “I did my first solo brew a month later. Today I have probably completed around 200 brews on our 50-liter system.”
Charosa, along with Uwase and American homebrewer and beer enthusiast Brian Magee, worked flat out to ready enough beer for Kweza’s big launch. The main brewhouse—a 1,000-liter (8.5-barrel) system imported from China—finally arrived in May of this year, along with the final member of Kweza’s brewing team.
“I knew I was going to go into brewing. I just didn’t know where or when.”
Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela is a brewmaster from South Africa who started her career with SABMiller and later launched her own craft brewery in Johannesburg. She splits her time between Rwanda and South Africa, acting as consultant master brewer for Kweza. Once she has the new equipment up and running, she’ll be tweaking recipes and training the rest of the team. It’s a six-month gig, although Flynn is hoping to convince Nxusani-Mawela to stay on. “She has been my ‘phone a friend’ throughout this process,” says Flynn. “We’d been talking for about five years and I managed to convince her to come up here to try it out and see how she likes Rwanda. I’m hoping she’ll become a permanent part of the team.”
Flynn has a knack for winning people over. With less than 24 hours to go until the launch, she is juggling consecutive crises that would reduce many to tears—and yet somehow she is still smiling.
Beauchesne offers high praise for Flynn’s sense of dedication and resilience.
“Her skill set, her passion, her energy—it’s really something special,” he says. “Take a look at the team—they are bending over backwards for her. It’s not for the idea, nor for themselves, not even for each other. It’s for her.”
As I chat to Beauchesne outside the brewery, the usual “24 hours until launch” activity is buzzing around us: Signage is hung, walls are being painted, taps are being installed, and a constant stream of deliveries arrives, including plants, chairs, tables, and carbon dioxide from the only supplier in the country. But Flynn isn’t here. She is chasing down the glassware, which just arrived from Kenya and is now held up at customs, where the only person with the capacity to release the goods has left for lunch.
When Flynn returns, it’s a double celebration: She has Kweza-branded glasses in her car and a very important email on her phone. The liquor license, which had hit a last-minute speedbump that must have kept Flynn awake for the better part of the week, has just been granted. After seven years, Kweza is finally ready to launch.
For Flynn, there were only two dates that made sense for the official launch: International Women’s Day on March 8, or Umuganura, Rwanda’s harvest celebration, in August. When the initial launch planned for Women’s Day had to be postponed, the date was set.
“We really weren’t quite ready this time either,” says Jessi, “but when I asked the team if we should hold off, they understandably didn’t want to wait another seven months—so we decided to push through and launch for Umuganura.”
Umuganura is a public holiday, marked across the country with the drinking of fresh ikigage. This year, Kweza’s launch party was one of the official, government-approved Umuganura festivities, with local dignitaries turning up to drink not traditional beer, but a modern take on the classic that celebrates Rwandan agriculture with each sip. It is a happy coincidence that the brewery’s launch also coincides with International Beer Day, with both celebrated on the first Friday in August.
After a joyful welcome of traditional music and dance, followed by a round of official speeches, the ribbon is cut and the taps of Rwanda’s first craft brewery are officially opened. The beers all contain at least 60% locally malted sorghum, except for the very popular ginger beer, a mildly alcoholic brew that was born during lockdown, when Flynn had to experiment with whatever she could find in local supermarkets. Ambrosia Pale Ale quickly proves itself to be a crowd favorite, and people are impressed with the coffee character of Silverback Stout, asking whether it contains locally grown coffee, though all of its coffee notes come from German roasted barley, imported via Kenya. For me, the standout is the IPA, based on a recipe that Flynn created with her father back when they were homebrewing in Boston.
“Anything we import has to go through the Masai Mara or the Serengeti. Our equipment goes on better safaris than I do.”
People take tours through the brewery, then grab a beer to drink in the pretty garden area, where a local band has taken over from the ikinimba performers. The brewery sits in an artisanal shopping complex featuring a chocolatier, a boutique liquor store, and an excellent pastry shop, among others, though Kweza appears to be the anchor tenant.
At this point, Flynn might deserve a rest, but the hurdles in what she calls “the land of a thousand business hills” are far from over. Kweza is already pouring in a few venues around the city, and once the larger-scale equipment is up and running, it will be able to increase capacity toward the initial 6,000-liter (51 BBL) a month goal. More than 50 hotels and restaurants are on a waiting list to get Kweza on tap, but even that will bring some challenges.
“We need to train every client on draft management, and we have to install and service the taps,” she says. “Draft is not a big thing in Rwanda. We think that when we installed our first tap at the Four Points at Sheraton, it was the first non-Heineken-owned tap in the country.”
The initial crowdfunding campaign actually had the goal to supply the brewery with a bottling line, but there’s a conspicuous lack of bottles at Kweza. It makes sense for a North American brewery startup. But it isn’t quite so practical here.
“In Rwanda there is no sand, which is necessary to make glass,” she says “This would mean importing bottles from another country by truck, either over Lake Victoria or through the Serengeti. It hurts my brain that anything we import has to go through the Masai Mara or the Serengeti. Our equipment goes on better safaris than I do.” Flynn is investigating the option of importing a canning line from South Africa or perhaps working with a local ceramicist to create unique growlers, but for the moment, the beers are exclusively available on tap.
“The Kickstarter funds that were initially raised for a bottling line have been used to buy all of our pilot equipment as well as ingredients for the pilot batches, import duties, rent, and licensing fees,” says Flynn. The next job is to install plaques thanking the major donors who believed in the project from its inception in 2016.
Although the launch marks an achievement, the project still has plenty of goals to reach. Uwineza originally intended for Kweza to benefit Rwandan women, though Flynn is obviously from the U.S. while Charosa is from Zimbabwe.
Flynn says that her long-term goal is to pass the reins on to a Rwandan woman and eventually return to landscape architecture. “We’ve been looking for years. I’m hoping someone local will see us be successful and eventually want to take over.” Until then, she says, Kweza supports other local companies run by Rwandan women, sourcing everything they possibly can from female-owned suppliers.
Beauchesne knows that the Kweza hasn’t yet met the initial brief, but that doesn’t dampen his elation that “an utterly ridiculous challenge” has finally come to fruition.
“You made a dream come true,” he tells Flynn when he takes the floor. “I am more grateful than I could ever explain.”
And there’s a lot to be grateful for. The shareholders, including Flynn, who own Rwanda’s first craft brewery are made up of more than 80% women and people of color. Beauchesne and the brewery he founded don’t hold any equity, despite Flynn repeatedly requesting him to accept a share.
This is a battle she won’t win, she says, so she’s saving her energy for the challenge of educating the wider Rwandan public on the finer points of draft craft beer. For all the difficulties of being first to market, Flynn does see one huge positive: “What I love about setting the norm is that when other breweries start opening, people will say ‘What do you mean guys brew craft beer? Women are the ones who brew craft beer.’”
Words + Photos by Lucy Corne
