Spirited African Distillers Aim For The Global Market

As the ski season wound down in April, a video surfaced on Instagram showing a group of holidaymakers sipping Pedro's premium ggr on the snowy slopes of the French Alps. Wrapped in ski jackets and speaking in a mix of Lagosian, London and American accents, they passed around the subtly smoky Nigerian spirit, laughing and toasting as if defying both gravity and history.

The moment was unscripted, raw, and oddly poignant: a drink that was once the equivalent of Nigerian moonshine turned into a premium brand, and now drunk in one of Europe's most exclusive playgrounds.

Lola Pedro, the British-Nigerian co-founder of Pedro's, didn't know who the skiers were. But she wasn't surprised. "Nigerians are everywhere," she said. "And Pedro's always finds its way into a suitcase." Pedro's is part of a new generation of African-owned spirits reshaping perceptions of what the continent can produce and export. Across Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, local entrepreneurs are reclaiming indigenous ingredients and traditions long dismissed as informal, illicit, or inferior. Their brands fuse authenticity with innovation, aiming to capture their slice of the global premium market while staying rooted in cultural memory.

In Lagos, Pedro's has become a cult favourite among a certain crowd - discerning drinkers, diaspora returnees, and travellers looking for something more immersive than imported cognac. But the path from palm to polished bottle hasn't been easy.

Pedro's is distilled from palm sap, traditionally fermented and fired in bush stills. Pedro and her business partner Chibueze Akukwe wanted to preserve that heritage while refining the product so that it could sit on shelves in Selfridges. "We didn't want to just repackage ggr. We wanted to elevate it," Akukwe says. "But there was no roadmap. The Nigerian authorities weren't sure how to regulate us. Exporting spirits made entirely in Nigeria? That's still basically unheard of."