Cameroon ranked 2nd highest wine consuming African country

By Tata Mbunwe

Recent data published by Sagaci Research, a pan-African market research firm, has ranked Cameroon second country in Africa in terms of the percentage of adults consuming wine, after Togo.

According to the study, which spans from June 2020 to June 2021, the top three countries with the highest proportion of their adult population consuming wine on the continent are Togo, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast in the respective order.

Sagaci Research indicates that 25 percent of the Cameroonian adult population consumed wine in the last four weeks of the research, making the country the second highest wine consuming country in the continent after Togo which tops the chart with 26 percent.

“Togo takes first place in terms of wine consumption, followed closely behind by Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire, each scoring 26%, 25% and 23% respectively, of the nation’s adult population having consumed wine in the last four weeks. Although Togo is not the continent’s largest consumer of wine in terms of volume, a greater proportion of its adult population consumes wine than in other African nations,” reads part of the information published on Sagaci Research’s website on July 26.

“A total of 29 countries of the 54 on the continent were included in the study,” according to Sagaci Research, and the “other nations in the top 10 in terms of consumption include the Republic of Congo, Benin, South Africa, Gabon, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Namibia,” it added.

Sagaci’s analysis shows that French-speaking countries dominate the wine consumption chart, constituting eight among the top 10 wine consuming countries in Africa.

“Although the wine-making tradition is present in several regions of the continent (Morocco, Ethiopia, South Africa…), the data seems to show that the French have strongly influenced the consumption habits in other countries, as 8 out of the top 10 wine-consuming nations in Africa have a common history with France”.

The study also indicates that, apart from the marketing aspect, a country’s cultural habits as well as religious beliefs influence its wine consumption trend.