"Alcohol destroying Namibia"

- headline

These Namibian drinking statistics are fascinating. Does it mean that Vision 2030 will be in double-vision? It’s true there are lies, damned lies and statistics, and that we have to be careful about the assumptions, the dodgy maths and the dubious conclusions. Take the factoid that 69.9% of Windhoekers ‘drink’. What is drinking – a bottle of brandy a day? One shandy a week? However, there are some interesting logical titbits to be extracted. For instance, that 55.6% of adult Namibians drink 33 bottles of beer a week. (Can we say then that the average consumption of beer is approximately 35 bottles a week?) .

But if so, assuming a normal kind of ‘bell curve’, and that 35 bottles is the centre of it; and further assuming that there are at least a few resolute lonely souls in Namibia who do not drink (0 bottles), it must mean that there are some celebratory citizens who drink 70 bottles of beer a week! No wonder that on a Saturday night, the city loses a substantial proportion of its lampposts. Also, you may rest assured that your investment in Namibia Breweries’ shares is fairly safe.

[No seriously, I must stress that NamBrew is a brilliantly managed company; a David that is driving the Goliath over the border crazy. I’m also very impressed to see that NamBrew has a Customer Care Centre in town – what have they got there – beds to sleep it off, and bottomless black coffee on offer?]

What about other kinds of alcohol – do they come on top of this, or are we just using beer as an alcohol measure or equivalent? It would be more useful to count in alcohol units – one unit being the equivalent of about 250ml of beer or one glass of wine or a small tot of spirits.

It is difficult to compare consumption with other countries. In the UK, statistics are kept of the percentages drinking above the recommended limits. These limits are 21 units per week for men and 14 for women. For men, that would equate to about 14 normal bottles or cans of beer a week (only two a day – sorry, chaps!).

The Namibian study does not distinguish between males and females: the capacity of women to deal with a given quantity of alcohol is less than men due to smaller body mass and lower water content. Anyway, the British figures (last available for 2002) show that the percentage of men drinking on average per week above the recommended limit is about 26% and for women 23%. There are also figures for different age groups – in young people (up to 24) the level of drinking is declining, which may be surprising in the light of football hooligans and lager louts we see on TV. Women’s drinking however, shows a sharp increase.

To recap, about 25% of Brits drink over the medically recommended limit every week (probably similar in other European countries). By comparison, in Namibia, over DOUBLE that percentage drink over TWICE that recommended limit each week. Scary stuff, indeed.

Even more disturbingly, the figures seem to relate solely to official commercial alcohol, and do not include at all the consumption of home-brew. The city of Windhoek’s printout declares that there are 15 shebeens in the city – the most extreme disconnect between official theory and on-the-ground reality, I think, in the history of civic administration. Multiply by 100, more like.

To see if I could get a handle on citizens’ balance of interests, I did a quick yellow-pages survey, combined with other estimates, which indicate that the whole Windhoek conurbation offers:

1 specialist educational toyshop
2 public libraries
2 public swimming pools
3 tertiary education establishments
4 bookshops
and
1500 drinking places.
The drinking statistics are thus not surprising. It’s another reason why the move to bio-ethanol fuels would not work in Namibia – the product would be consumed by the human population before it could reach the vehicle population.