International beer maker, SABMiller Africa’s operation in South Sudan has been greatly hampered by the ongoing conflict in the horn of Africa Nation but they will not be closing shop in the troubled state, the Wall Street Journal reported.

SABMiller Africa’s managing director, Mark Bowman, told Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday that the company had had to evacuate its entire foreign staff and will make a conclusive decision on the matter in the next two weeks, but the company wouldn’t want to fully “pull out,”.

“We were the first manufacturing investor in South Sudan,” Bowman told the WSJ. “You don’t just leave, it’s a long game.”

SABMiller’s operates a $40 million investment in a single brewery in the young country’s capital, Juba. Bowman said it is now running on “skeleton staff.”

The conflict in South Sudan since late December is estimated to have killed over 2,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Even with negotiations going on in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a cease fire deal has not yet been reached.

Bowman said acquisition prospects are slim in Africa, but more options could be found in Asia.

For the first time at SAB, Africa contributed more to profit than Europe in the most recent financial year. The continent’s beer consumption is growing faster than that of any other region, but the drink remains a luxury for most Africans.

SABMiller owns a 20 percent state in the African beer operations of France’s Castel Group, a closely held family company. Bowman said it was up to Castel to decide whether it wants to sell those operations, but he added he hoped SABMiller would be a “natural candidate” if the smaller company did decide to do so.

He told WSJ that cassava beer will be a major element in SABMiller’s 2014 Africa strategy. The firm plans to start production of beer from this crop in Zambia and also is looking into similar investment opportunities in Nigeria in the course of this year.