July 8, 2025
The 41-year-old master brewer strives to introduce more women and girls to the male-dominated industry.
Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela is believed to be the first Black woman in South Africa to own a craft brewery. The 41-year-old master brewer strives to introduce more women and girls to the male-dominated industry.
Nxusani-Mawela is the owner of Tolokazi Brewery, located just outside Johannesburg, where she teaches youth the art of brewing.
The 13 students at Brewsters Academy hold degrees or diplomas in STEM fields, such as chemical engineering, biotechnology, or analytical chemistry. At Brewsters Academy, students can also earn an additional certification in brewing.
According to an Oxford Economics report in “Beer’s Global Economic Footprint,” South Africa’s beer industry creates over 200,000 jobs and contributes about $5.2 billion to South Africa’s gross domestic product. Nxusani-Mawela says she wants to ensure that women have an opportunity to benefit from the lucrative industry.
“I wanted to make sure that, being the first Black female to own a brewery in South Africa, I’m not the first and the last,” she told the Associated Press. “Brewsters Academy, for me, is about transforming the industry … What I want to see is that in five, ten years from now, that it should be a norm to have Black people in the industry, it should be a norm to have females in the industry.”
Twenty-four-year-old Lehlohonolo Makhethe, a Brewsters’ student, pointed out that women once dominated the beer brewing industry in some parts of Africa.
How it got male-dominated, I don’t know,” the 24-year-old brewer said. “I’d rather say we are going back to our roots as women to doing what we started.”
Nxusani-Mawela teaches various styles of brewing and strives to keep traditional African beer-making alive for future generations. Her Wild African Soul beer is a collaboration with craft beer company Soul Barrel Brewing, a blend of African Umqombothi beer —a creamy brew made from maize and sorghum malt —blended with fruity notes. Wild African Soul Beer was the 2025 African Beer Cup winner.
“Umqombothi is our African way, and everybody should know how to make it, but we don’t,” she said. “I believe that the beer styles that we make need to reflect having an element of our past being brought into the future,” Nxusani-Mawela said.
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