J. K. Siaw

Joshua Kwabena Siaw, popularly known as J. K. Siaw (January 1923 – October 1986), was a Ghanaian industrialist and philanthropist, who in 1969 established Tata Brewery Ltd. – now known as Guinness Ghana Breweries, also as Achimota Brewery Company (ABC).

Joshua Kwabena Siaw was born in Obomeng, a small town in the Eastern Region of Ghana, in January 1923.

His father came from Akwaseho and his mother from Juaben in the Ashanti Region.

J. K. Siaw worked with his father on a cocoa farm before attending school, aged 12, in 1935, and he took to basket-making as a way to make more money to further his own education.

In 1942, aged 19, Siaw became a teacher of Standard One class in Akwaseho.

After a couple of months he went to work at the Orthodox Mission School and then to the Bremang Gold Dredging Company near Bogoso, in Ghana's Western Region.

After just one month, he went to Effiduase Banko to work again as a teacher from June 1943 to March 1945.

Siaw then went to work at the New Juaben Grammar School but left after a year because the headmaster, Mr. Sarkodea, was mismanaging the school.

Siaw established Christ College in 1946 with his father, before apprenticing with a pharmacist for a year.

In April 1950 he became a siding clerk at Kwahu Praso, transporting cocoa to Accra, Ghana's capital.

He repaid the £200 security charge for the clerking employment with interest in six months and was bound for a further six months, by contract, but he decided to stay for only four.

In 1953 he worked as a siding clerk, this time for the Cocoa Purchasing Company, which paid £6 a month.

He became a cocoa and timber transporter in 1954.

In 1957, he began selling enamelware until the Government of Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah banned the importation of those goods.

In 1964, Siaw's first request to the government to be granted permission to set up a brewery was rejected.

He applied again in 1967 and that application too was rejected on the grounds that licences had been given to Ashanti and Takoradi breweries.

Despite being offered an investment of 400,000 cedis from Siaw, Takoradi brewery could not happen.

A third application to the government to set up a brewery was successful and approved 26 July 1969.

The approval was given to "Tata Trading Company" to establish a brewery in Cape Coast in the Central Region, Ghana, "a place of fashion, scholarship, and beauty".

A suitable site could not be found in Cape Coast and the project was relocated to Achimota, a town on the Accra-Nsawam Road.

The new National Redemption Council (NRC) government attempted to renegotiate the competing interests of the state, local businessmen, workers, and foreign capital.

Loans and tax incentives were promised to Ghanaian businessmen who went into manufacturing.

He is notable for opening the largest wholly African-owned brewery company in West Africa in 1973.

Tata Brewery Ltd was commissioned on 30 January 1973, Siaw's 50th birthday.

It was officially opened by the then Head of State Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, who said of the event: "It is the single-minded and single-handed effort of Mr. J. K. Siaw... which has been responsible for what we see around us today. Mr. Siaw is an excellent example of the innate ability of the Ghanaian to rise to the needs of the occasion".

Siaw had wanted "his Brewery to stand for centuries to come", "even longer than the famous Christiansborg Castle".

J. K. Siaw, established Tata Brewery Limited, the first fully Ghanaian-owned brewery in the country.

Tata Company secured exclusive export rights for the "Maltex" drink to neighbouring Togo, Dahomey (Benin), Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal, and The Gambia from Albani Breweries Limited, a Danish firm operating in Ghana.

The company was the first brewery to introduce draught beer into the country.

The Ghana Commercial Bank provided a loan of 950,000 cedis for the project to begin, with a pre-requisite that Siaw deposited 200,000 cedis.

Christ College evolved into Ghana Secondary School in Effiduase by 1976.

Siaw then decided to go into business and borrowed £50 (£1500.00 in 2013 relative value) to start up as a cocoa broker.

By 1976, the brewery employed 750 Ghanaians and only four expatriates.

Siaw produced his own brand of beer - Tata Pilsner Beer.

"In the country's bid to industrialize, the alcohol industry has played a pioneering role."

August 25, 1977 J.K Siaw formed The Modern Continental Bank together with Mr Kwadwo Ohene-Ampofo a legal practitioner.

For the workers and their families there was a clinic, a subsidised canteen and free transport to work.

In 1979 all his assets were confiscated by the AFRC regime of Ghana under false allegations of tax evasion.

He died in London, in exile, in October 1986.

In four months he had made £600 (£18,000.00 in 2013 relative value) profit.