The Uganda Wheelchair Basketball Federation has appointed Kenya’s Andrew Kihumba as it prepares for the 2023 African Paralympic Games in Accra, Ghana, in September.
Andrew Kihumba, who took Kenya to the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham last year and the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, is expected to start work with immediate effect.
Uganda’s men qualified for Accra after finishing second to Kenya in the East African Zonal Qualifiers in Dar es Salaam about ten days ago. But they will need better preps and friendly games to get into better shape for the tournament.
But the country needs nearly Shs100m to prepare for the tournament, Federation president Sulaiman Mayanja has said
“We need a coach of such a calibre, but we need the money to pay him,” Mayanja told Daily Monitor.
“We also need a residential camp for the 20 players we expect for at least one month.”
Mayanja attributed the team’s success partly to the 10 wheelchair Uganda received in September 2022, from an American charity that was co-founded by para-sport coach Peter Hughes and three friends.
“But we need more wheelchairs. And we also need to repair the ones we have. We need training jerseys. We also don’t have enough playing balls.”
It is understandable that Uganda has almost nothing because since late 2019, after the East African Zonal Championship, wheelchair basketball has been inactive.
While most of the national team staff are based in Kampala, some will have to travel over 300km from Gulu.
Mayanja, who is also a player, said they would have done better in Dar es Salaam but they were unfit. He said they trained for just days at the MTN Arena, Lugogo before shifting to the International French School along Lugogo Bypass.
Then the team endured a three-day bus drive on bumpy roads, especially to the Uganda-Tanzania border. “By the time we reached we were tired.”
However the provisional budget of Shs93m does not include the expenses for the friendly match, possibly against Ethiopia, as the Accra Games near.
