Anne Mugisa
20 September 2008
Kampala — The City of Leicester in the UK has offered to train Ugandan athletes for the 2012 Olympics, due in London. Leicester also wants to establish a football academy in Uganda, according to a press release from State House.
The city's authorities announced the offer in a meeting with President Yoweri Museveni, who is on a three-day visit to Leicester en route to the United Nations headquarters in New York, where Uganda will defend its candidature to become a non-permanent member of the Security Council.
Manjula Sood, the mayor of the multi-racial city of 300,000, said many of her residents left Uganda during Idi Amin's economic war. She said they had turned into role models for other residents in transforming their lives from poverty to prosperity.
The mayor, whose father trained as a medical health officer at Makerere University in the late 1960s, commended Museveni, saying he had led a remarkable economic transformation and democratisation in the country. She said it had earned Uganda a good image abroad.
During the meeting, Steve White from the city's School Development Support Agency told the President that Leicester has been sending football kits and sports items to Uganda. He said they started a football academy in South Africa and plan another one in Uganda.
"We want to establish another football academy in Uganda. We are working with some Ugandans, like Habib Kagimu," White said.
He pledged more assistance to improve the soccer standards in Uganda by training young, promising players who want to make a career in football.
He said Leicester is also offering facilities to Ugandan athletes and swimmers who will compete in the next Olympics. The training is due to start early next year.
The Rushey Mead Foundation, a charity, also announced that it will build a modern school in Lira.
Bashker Solanku from the Foundation said its officials had been to the North and they found children walking long distances to school.
Museveni expressed gratitude to the mayor and invited her with her mother to visit Uganda. They promised they would visit at the end of the year.
The President was accompanied by the Minister of State for Investment, Prof. Semakula Kiwanuka, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Henry Okello Oryem and Members of Parliament Mike Mabikke and Akol Rose Okullo.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 New Vision. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
