Foreign Affairs. January-February 2020

Recent Books

January/February 2020 201

many Somalis reluctantly find some

virtues in the group. For instance,

many Somalis prefer the Islamic courts

run by al Shabab to the government’s

courts, which are more corrupt.

Heineken in Africa: A Multinational

Unleashed

BY OLIVIER VAN BEEMEN. Hurst,

2019, 240 pp.

Heineken, which is brewed in the

Netherlands, is one of the most popular

and widely available beers in Africa

today. That ubiquity masks a darker story.

Van Beemen traces the company’s

unscrupulous opportunism in establishing

a dominant presence in Africa. He

catalogs the firm’s objectionable practices,

which have included supporting the

apartheid regime in South Africa in the

1960s and various authoritarian govern-

ments in more recent years and using

young women called “promotion girls,”

who are often subjected to sexual harass-

ment by clients and even by Heineken

staff, to sell the beer. Van Beemen’s

revelations caused a scandal in the

Netherlands when the book first appeared,

but most of his findings were wholly

predictable. The book is more interesting

when it describes the flexible manage-

ment practices that allowed the company

to function in places such as the Demo-

cratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra

Leone at times when state authority

there was extremely weak. The com-

pany’s success also stems from its ability

to charge relatively high prices in Africa

thanks to the beer’s reputation as a

prestige product; since its production

costs are low on the continent, Heineken

enjoys profit margins in Africa that are

higher than elsewhere.

Boko Haram in Nigeria, and al Shabab

in Somalia. Much has already been

written about these groups, but Hansen’s

account has the significant virtue of

demonstrating the many individual,

organizational, and ideological links

among them, which were facilitated by

al Qaeda when it was headquartered in

the Sudanese capital of Khartoum in the

early 1990s. Hansen also emphasizes the

great adaptability and resilience of these

movements, which have endured in

different forms despite concerted

attempts to defeat them. One reason

for their dogged survival, he suggests, is

the groups’ “glocal” nature, their ability to

embed themselves in local societies and

also follow global trends and dynamics.

Groups such as al Shabab or al Qaeda in

the Islamic Maghreb have at times

controlled significant stretches of land,

but Hansen argues convincingly that

they are more effective when they

dominate a region politically and levy

taxes without maintaining full territo-

rial control.

Harper has long reported on Somalia

for the bbc, and her searing account of

al Shabab relates with moving detail and

nuance the stories of the many Somalis

she has met over the years. Al Shabab’s

press service often contacted her to spin

the militant group’s horrendous acts of

violence—and to remind her that the

militants were following her every

movement in Somalia. Harper’s sympathy

clearly lies with the many victims of the

group’s violence, but her book also helps

explain al Shabab’s survival despite

various setbacks. She describes al Shabab’s

organizational strength and its effec-

tive use of intelligence networks. Too

many observers fixate on al Shabab’s

use of terror, but Harper shows that

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