Rwanda’s Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has closed eight local spirits distilleries for producing substandard and illicit alcoholic products, which authorities attribute to the deaths of more than 50 people in the first half of this year.
According to the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB), 50 owners of such businesses have also been arrested, while others are on the run for violating the standards set by the authority. A total of 38 specified spirits have also been banned from the market, with consumers warned not to buy or partake.
The distilleries affected included Ingufu Gin Ltd, NBG Ltd, SKY Drop Industries Ltd, African Buffalo Ltd, NOPA Company Ltd, Rugali Agro-Processing Company, Roots Investment Group Ltd and Zhonglu Industrial Liability Company Ltd.
The agency added that any other brands produced by the said companies are also banned.
Rwanda saw a mushrooming of local spirits factories, mainly in 2020, when the Rwanda-Uganda border was closed for four years.
Ugandan alcohol products had been favourites on the Rwandan market before the border closure, but their entry into Rwanda has since been restricted, even after the border reopened.
To fill the void, many distillers emerged and flooded the Rwandan market with substitutes, but authorities now say standards have fallen, causing harm to human health and prompting the crackdown.
After closing the border with Uganda and restricting imports of spirits and gin, Rwanda turned to Tanzania and Kenya, on which it now relies to replace imports that previously came from Uganda.
This is another move by the government to crack down on alcohol abuse, following Rwanda’s strict nightlife rules that prohibits businesses from operating past 1am on weekdays and 2am at weekends.
However, regional imports from Tanzania and Kenya, which many believe are of the same quality, have not been banned, while Ugandan imports, which are approved internationally, remain barred from entering the Rwandan market.
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The immediate closure of the factories in Rwanda will affect the growth of the local brewing industry at a time when Kigali is positioning manufacturing as a strong pillar of the country’s economic development.
The FDA said in its statement that the closures were carried out under the law establishing the Rwanda Food and Drugs Authority and determining its mission, organisation and functioning. “Following the regulatory inspection and compliance assessment, the FDA hereby closes the listed alcoholic beverage manufacturing facilities and revokes all associated manufacturing licences,” the FDA statement read.
Rwanda says young people are being consumed by alcohol abuse, affecting their productivity, and that these cheap liquors produced by Rwandan factories make alcohol affordable to low-income earners.
With some of these products selling for one dollar or less, many young people have turned to them instead of more expensive products such as beer. Authorities believe that revoking licences and stopping production will help curb this vice.
The FDA urged the Rwandan public to “immediately stop consumption of the products that have been mentioned” and instructed all facilities to recall the products from their clients and return current stock to the manufacturers.
According to figures from Rwanda’s Ministry of Local Government, more than 95 percent of young people in rehabilitation centres around the country are battling addiction to illicit alcohol and drugs.
Last week, Rwanda also tightened controls on industrial alcohol by suspending and revoking all import licences for neutral spirit, or ethanol, and halting pending applications.
The action follows a deadly public health crisis in which illegal producers mixed toxic methanol into cheap drinks, causing at least 50 deaths and more than 100 reported cases of vision impairment in 2026.
However, producers have not welcomed the decision to suspend production and recall products on the market with immediate effect, saying they were not consulted. “We are left speechless and do not know what to say at the moment. We do not know the way forward, and we do not know why some imports, such as those from Tanzania, are still coming in when they do not have better standards than us,” said Samuel Ntihanabayo, chief executive officer of Ingufu Gin Limited, one of the affected producers.
The exact tax contribution generated by local gin in Rwanda in 2025 is not publicly isolated in general national revenue reports. Alcoholic beverages with local raw material content are taxed at an excise rate of 30 percent, whereas others without the required local raw material threshold facead valoremexcise duty of 70 percent of the value per litre.
