Beer is Art | Documentary Explores Fermentation, Culture & Community

June 24, 2025 | Ruvani de Silva

When Obakeng Malope launched her highly ambitious Beer is Art project back in 2022, her focus was on raising money to educate young people in South Africa about the art of brewing, offering them career opportunities in the burgeoning South African craft beer market.

While she gathered international and local collaborators to her cause, Malope was always keen to stress the significance of brewing in African culture, specifically the cultural importance of traditional sorghum-based Bojalwa jwa Setswana, or Umqombothi, which is brewed by women, including Malope’s grandmother.

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Beer Is Art | Obakeng Malope’s Campaign to Lift South Africa’s Youth Out of Poverty Through Craft Beer

October 14, 2022 | Ruvani de Silva

Obakeng Malope has a mission. The South African brewer and filmmaker has started a project blending beer culture and social change with enormous scope on both a national and international level, and her hard work and tenacity has already led to significant press and multi-national collaboration.

Malope is the creator of Beer Is Art, an initiative to offer access to the craft beer industry to South Africa’s unemployed young people. In the second quarter of 2022, 4.8 million 15-34 year old South Africans were unemployed, 46.5% of the population in that age group. Malope believes that the growing South African craft beer industry has the potential to help lift some of these young people out of poverty. “The youth are sitting at home unemployed here in South Africa. The campaign teaches about beer, that beer is not something that you drink and get drunk off. We teach beer and food pairing, brewing, beer podcasting and licensing. We show them that they can turn beer into a career,” she says.

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