Coca-Cola released details last Friday of exactly how dominant its position in the Ghanaian soft drinks market has become. The company has two major factories in the country, in Tema and Kumasi, capable of producing 4000 crates per hour in total. Sales figures have topped twelve million crates per year, or 288 million bottles, of which 50% is Coca-Cola itself, and the remainder mostly Sprite and Fanta.

The company's present strength in the country has been helped greatly in the past few years by its acquisition of Schweppes, traditionally a global rival not only to Coca-Cola, but also to its strongest traditional competitor, Pepsi-Cola.

Perhaps more accurately, though, Coca-Cola's success can be traced back to its high visibility advertising campaigns and the support it has given local retailers.

A large majority of the spot bars in Accra now have the Coca-Cola sign emblazoned above them, as part of the company's strategy to provide support to local vendors in exchange for customer loyalty. 8000 tables and umbrellas have also been provided, along with 3500 coolers or refrigerators, free of charge.

This is certainly a mutually beneficial arrangement - local retailers are provided with a short-term helping hand by the Coca-Cola, whilst the company guarantees itself a sizeable, if not monopolistic, market share for the future. To a global giant the size of Coca-Cola, this type of outlay is relatively insignificant, but gives it pole position in the eventuality that the African market begins to expand at kind of the rate the Asian 'tiger' economies have achieved in the past.

Coca-Cola has also recently introduced its Bon Aqua mineral water product to Ghana, as well as the new 1 litre bottles of Coke. Coca-Cola's major brewery and bottling rivals, Pepsi-Cola, ABC Breweries and Ghana Breweries were contacted for their thoughts on the state of the market, but officials were unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.