How corruption leads to bad tasting beer

There is only one brewery in Madagascar. Its flagship beer is Three Horses Beer (THB). It’s a refreshing pilsner, a tad sweet, a bit chemical, and I got tired of it after a week. So why isn’t there any better beer on the island? Corruption, my friend.


A brewer from Mauritius has tried to enter the Malagasy market. It built a new brewery outside the capital and started a massive ad campaign to launch its beer. Two days before the opening of the factory, two official documents were missing and the factory could not start producing. Rumor has it THB gave a €2 million bribe to government officials to retain the beer monopoly.

The same process occurs in all sectors and development doesn’t happen. No need to look further to understand underdevelopment. The question is how do you root out corruption?