On a bitterly cold Saturday afternoon in Worcester, a forlorn rural community near South Africa’s southern tip, the queue at the liquor store is the longest in town.

It’s a scene constantly repeated across South Africa and a number of other nations on the continent: the prelude to a weekend of binge drinking.

After years of turning a blind eye to alcohol abuse, politicians from South Africa to Kenya and Zambia are under pressure to tackle a problem that is adding to Africa’s burden of HIV, birth defects, road accidents and violent crime.

Africa has the world’s highest proportion of binge drinkers, even though its large populations of Muslims and evangelical Christians generally abstain from alcohol. As incomes rise, it has become a boom market for international brewers and distillers whose sales are often flagging in the wealthy world.

“It’s true that most people in Africa don’t drink for cultural, religious and economic reasons but those who drink, drink a lot,” said Dr Vladimir Poznyak of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva.

If governments finally crack down effectively, companies such as SABMiller, Diageo Plc and Heineken NV may find Africa no longer allows the spectacular sales growth they have achieved there in recent years.

The drinks firms say Africans are better off consuming their products than popular but sometimes lethal home concoctions.

However, the effects in Worcester of drinkers rapidly consuming dangerous - sometimes even fatal - quantities of alcohol are obvious. The liquor store queue snakes past a drunken man crumpled on the ground in a pool of vomit and in the evening drinkers cram into Worcester’s numerous run-down bars.

“They drink and drink and drink. They don’t stop when it is necessary to stop drinking liquor,” said Berita Jones, a police captain in the town of about 130,000.

“Worcester’s crime is almost entirely alcohol-related,” said Jones, whose time is spent checking that its 166 licensed bars outlets comply with the law, and making regular raids of its more than 300 shebeens, or informal taverns.

UNQUENCHABLE THIRST

Home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies, Africa’s thirst for beer and spirits is almost unquenchable: analysts estimate beer volumes rose around 7 percent last year. Excluding the mature South African market, growth reached more than 10 percent.

Drinks companies want to keep up the momentum. SABMiller is investing up to $2.5 billion over the next five years to build and renovate breweries on the continent. Rival Diageo’s African sales have risen by an average 15 percent in each of the last five years, and now account for 14 percent of the group’s total.

But some public health officials say regulation of alcohol consumption and education about its abuse have failed to keep pace. “In parallel to this increase in commercial alcohol availability, the infrastructure and regulation for effective alcohol control have no strong tradition in many African countries,” said Poznyak.

NEW LAWS

On average an African drinks about 6.15 liters of pure alcohol each year, about half of what a European consumes. However, more than 25 percent of Africans are binge drinkers, the highest proportion in the world, according to a WHO report.

Most African countries already have laws that prohibit underage drinking and drink driving, but critics say these are poorly enforced and often completely ignored.

South Africa is crafting a new law to restrict alcohol advertising, raise the minimum drinking age to 21 from 18 and get tougher on drink driving, Minister of Social Development Bathabile Dlamini has said.

The bill would also propose warning labels on alcohol containers, raising taxes and stricter licensing laws for alcohol outlets, said a government official who declined to be identified because the bill has not yet been made public.

The bill will be discussed in South Africa’s cabinet in the next few weeks before its release for public comment, the official said.

In Kenya authorities are also looking to raise the legal drinking age to 21 from 18, following on from a 2010 law that banned alcohol sales in grocery stores and in bars before 5 p.m.