Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Uganda. Mama, the Minister of Education and Sports, the Vice President, the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament of Uganda, the Honourable Ministers present, Members of Parliament, Ambassadors, the football fraternity that is here with us, dear fellow countrymen. For me, it’s an emotional day. It is said that dreams are dreams, but dreams, I can testify, come true.
Your Excellency, as FUFA, we had a dream to emplore the government of the Republic of Uganda to assist us to improve on the sporting infrastructure in the country. We needed to use football to sell Uganda to the world. We needed football to be looked at more than just a sport.
We realised that one of the things we would do is to host Africa, in East Africa, for the first time. And we also realised that we could not do it alone, because it would be an enormous cost in terms of time and resources. We teamed up with Kenya and Tanzania under the East African integration spirit.
And we believed that through your Pan-African belief, it would be a good project if we sold it to you. And as a Federation, we reached out to you, Your Excellency, through our Minister, that we needed the government to sign guarantees before we could host CAF as the requirements of the regulations of CAF. Mzee, like it has always been, you did not tire of us.
You welcomed us and you allowed us to go and submit the bid. We went, as a delegation that was headed by the Deputy Speaker of Parliament of Uganda and other government dignitaries, to Cairo with a dream that Africa would accept Africa to come here in the biggest sporting competition on the African soil, and that’s the Africa Cup of Nations. Your Excellency, our journey was successful, but it would not have been without your continuous calls and engagement with the other presidents of the other sister countries and also with the CAF President himself.
The country deserves to know your personal effort in ensuring that we are here. We wouldn’t have been here without your personal input. Your Excellency, it is one thing to qualify AFCON, but it’s totally another thing to bring AFCON to Uganda.
If everyone is excited as I am here today, let us give a huge round of applause. Your Excellency, we have since recruited Mama to football. When she organised that milestone meeting the Honourable Minister talked about on the 24th of December, which is supposed to be a holiday, and the way she has understood the scope of work, the guidance that she has given, I am happy of the advocacy work we have done as football, that now we have Mama and yourself as number one supporters of the game of football in this country. I therefore wish to inform the country that we are now, from the footballing perspective, ready to host Chan 2024.
Your Excellency and Mama, with the success of Chan 2024, where we have learned a lot, our setups as FUFA, but I’m sure as the different government functionalities of what it takes to host a competition of this magnitude. With your continued guidance and support, I want to say again that together as Uganda, we are ready to host AFCON 2027.
Allow me to use this moment, Your Excellency, to appreciate that the first things have been done. We now have stability. We now have peace. As Ugandans, we have general infrastructure to allow us to move from one part of the country to the other.
Based on that, as football, as sport, we are able to exercise and practice our God-given talents to use the sport. Having done the first things, we went into a phase where we needed government support and you have been very supportive, Your Excellency. Funding of the different sports activities, starting from 400 million shillings in 2014 to about 48 billion Uganda shillings as we speak today.
We are very proud of that. Now sport can take such a contribution from the National Consolidated Fund. Your Excellency, we have been having a very old law enacted in 1964, but again with the support of Mama as the Minister of Education and Sports, we have been able to get a new one.
You have assented to the National Sports Act 2023 with the support of the Office of the Attorney General. Thank you so much, Your Excellency. In terms of infrastructure, from playing home, away from home, today as we speak, we have three international stadiums that are coming up, Namboole, Hoima and Akiibua.
We have training centres that are coming up that will also be used for different competitions, including Kadiba, that will be the home of the National Football Academy. What is remaining is how to integrate sport as an economic activity into the NRM government’s socio-economic transformation agenda. Your Excellency, there is evidence that government’s contribution can show already some fruits at the minimum.
Between 1979 and 2012, 33 years, we only qualified five times for the continental competitions, for 33 years. With the government support, we are now able to return to Africa, the Africa Cup of Nations, after 39 years for the men and after 22 years for the women, because of this support we are getting from government. We have been able to qualify in the last 12 years, as we speak, for 19 continental finals now, including one world cup for the first time ever.
We cannot thank government enough and sport and football in particular will continue to make sure that our country benefits from this God-given talent to our children. Your Excellency, in terms of improvement, our vision as FUFA is to become the number one football nation in Africa on and off the pitch. We cannot get there without proper planning and execution of our plans.
To be honest, to be the best in Africa requires Uganda to have among the best leagues in the world some of our players. We can only beat Morocco, Nigeria, Cameroon and Egypt, the giants of African football, sporadically. But consistently, we need players who should be playing at the highest level.
Your Excellency, it takes over 15 years to prepare a footballer to be at that level. It’s not different the way you prepare a doctor to prepare a professional footballer at that level, irrespective of whatever talent you have. And now that we have solved some of the first challenges, it is time to embark on the deliberate football development.
Your Excellency, FUFA has launched the FUFA technical master plan and it has four pillars to identify talent as early as 9 to 11 years. We have a deliberate elite path in terms of development of these identified talents. We have to ensure that the professional clubs provide a platform for those who may not be able to instantly go to better leagues.
And Your Excellency, we have to look at the life after playing because many of our footballers who spent a lot of time playing football for this country end up finishing and languishing because they did not learn any trade, they were busy representing the country in their prime age. We are already in the talent identification where we have distributed 66,000 balls donated from FIFA to all government primary schools in Uganda. There is no part of Uganda you go to today and you don’t see these balls being played.
Instead of the children, instead they are being used by the adults. We have a computer system where the captured talents are being put and we now need to support the academies at the professional clubs and launch the National Football Academy for the elite path development. It is our strategy at FUFA that we now is the time for the football clubs that are development hubs themselves to be supported by public and private sector funding.
In conclusion, Your Excellency, there has never been a better time for a football person in Uganda than now. Because as we speak, we are hosting Africa. As we speak, our players are going to the World Cup.
As we speak, we have proper infrastructure. As we speak, we have full government support because we cannot do this without the support of government. Once again, Your Excellency, thank you for always listening to us.
Mama, thank you so much for supporting football, for supporting sport, for supporting the young children of this country to use their talents to be able to benefit but also to make our country happy. Your Excellency, I want to end by saying we are now ready to host the 2024.
Thank you so much. For God and my Country.
