Ugandans love their alcohol and they will find any excuse to indulge in drinking. Stress, excitement, celebration, promotion at work, demotion, success, failure and mourning,are some reasons for one to drink. One of the most common businesses is the bar business.people open bars daily, to try and keep up with the demand. Weekends register the biggest number of drinkers. its common for one to drive straight from work to the bar on a Friday evening andreturn home on Saturday morning!

Weekends are also busy days for the police. its when they carry out arrests for drunk drivers.However,this doesn’t seem to deter them as they always find a way to beat the system. Social media platforms have been opened to specifically alert drunk drivers of the routes infiltrated with police road blocks“Kawunyemu” Alerts.

A typical bar must have an assortment of beers and spirits, they must have a music system with a resident DJ because people love to dance and as they get intoxicated, the dancing intensifies. a flat screen TV showing live football matches, premiership matches is a must, clubs.

Bar owners must also be creative in-order to maintain their patrons and attract new customers. some hire Musicians others have performances from live bands, queen dancers, karaoke all this in the effort to survive in the fierce competition!

The brewery companies need to continuously be creative and introduce new drinks in-order to survive and keep their customer base interested. They keep introducing new products on the market. The most popular one is the beer bucket where for 10,000 one gets 4 beers or 5 depending on the location. the bottles are packaged in 300ml and not the usual 500ml.

Then there are the sachets that have flooded the market which go for as little as 500 shillings for a 100ml sachet and they come with interesting names such as: Empire, Coffee, X5! There are several brands for one to choose from.

From the popular malwa groups which have evolved from a social gathering to Sacco’s, they are a force to reckon and during the President’s campaign trail, he had to recognizethem. to the affluent who drink black label in five-star hotels striking multi- million deals, booze still flows to the wee hours.

That is the reality of Uganda the drinking nation, we can only pray that people engage in responsible drinking, bar tenders restrict their clientele to those above 18 years and that the drinking does not crash our fragile economy!