Uplift Soccer Academy, a big project by Mugisha glowing since 2023

He Dreamed of Manchester United. Now He Is Building a Pipeline From Kampala to Europe.

Ayub Mugisha played professionally across four countries but never reached the European clubs he dreamed of.

In 2023, he founded Uplift Soccer Academy in Kampala so the next generation of Ugandan players would not face the same dead ends.

Mugisha knows what it feels like to have the talent but not the ticket.

As a young footballer growing up in Kampala’s Kibuli neighborhood, he did everything the game asked of him.

He trained at Sports Outreach Academy, climbed through the ranks at Kibuli United, and eventually left Uganda to play in Kenya with clubs in Kakamega and Vihiga United.

From there, he crossed the Indian Ocean to Seychelles, where he spent five seasons with Foresters Football Club before also playing in Thailand.

It was a professional career that spanned four countries. But it was never the career he wanted.

“I personally wanted to play professionally for the best European team, like Manchester United,” Mugisha remarks. “It was a big dream of mine. But due to no connections, no finances, and no well-structured platform, I could not.”

That sentence, “I could not,” is the reason Uplift Soccer Academy exists.

In 2023, Mugisha returned to the same Kibuli neighborhood where he first kicked a ball and founded a youth football academy built around a single premise: that Ugandan players fail to reach international football not because they lack ability, but because they lack access.

Access to professional coaching. Access to scouts. Access to the people and platforms turn raw talent into opportunity.

Three years later, the academy he built on that premise has more than 120 players across six age categories, from U8 to U23, training on the grounds of Kibuli Secondary School in Kampala.

A partnership built on school grounds

Uplift Soccer Academy operates through a formal partnership with Kibuli Secondary School, which provides the academy’s training facility.

It is a practical arrangement that reflects the academy’s broader philosophy: football and education are not competing priorities. They are inseparable ones.

During school terms, players train on weekends, Saturday and Sunday, for two to three hours per session. During holidays, the schedule intensifies to five days a week, Monday through Friday, with sessions running from 2:00 PM to roughly 5:00 PM.

Five coaches run the training program, including Hassan Tembo Isingoma and Ronald Kibirango, both of whom hold CAF C coaching licenses issued by the Confederation of African Football (CAF).

The coaching staff emphasizes technical development, tactical understanding, physical conditioning, and mental discipline, with a structured progression through the academy’s age groups.

But the training alone is not what sets Uplift apart from the dozens of other youth football academies operating across Kampala. What separates this academy is what happens after the training.

The Scout connection:

Most youth academies in Uganda train players. Uplift trains them and then brings the scouts to watch.

Through a partnership with Goal Club, an Italy-based football agency, the academy has built a direct connection between its training pitch in Kibuli and the international scouting circuit.

 In September 2025, Uplift hosted exhibition matches that drew four scouts from Italy and Uruguay to Kampala. Those scouts selected six players from the event.

“The invitation of scouts to come and scout players from our academy is the unique factor that differentiates us from other academies,” Mugisha notes.

The results are beginning to show. Two academy players have already traveled to the UAE for professional trials.

And the academy’s competitive squad is currently sitting fourth in the ongoing Uganda Mini Football League 2026.

For an academy founded just three years ago, these are early but concrete signs that the model is working.

Rahil Yasser did not come here to be famous:

Not every story at Uplift is about scouts and trials. Some of the most revealing ones are about a kid just trying to earn minutes.

Rahil Yasser did not start at Uplift. He came from a smaller program called Bwate Soccer Academy before making the switch.

His football hero is Mohamed Salah at Liverpool FC, and his ambitions, like Salah’s early career, are still taking shape.

“My biggest challenge playing football in Uganda as a young player is getting play time in matches and also getting confidence when playing with more experienced players,” Rahil says.

It is a modest admission, and that is exactly what makes it worth hearing.

Rahil is not the academy’s poster child for international stardom. He is a young player working through the same struggles that every youth footballer faces: earning minutes, building belief, learning to compete.

What Uplift has given him, by his own account, is structure.

“Uplift Soccer Academy has taught me that education is very important even if you play football,” he says. “You have to balance both school and football.”

His current goal is straightforward: to earn a starting position, or at the very least, come off the bench.

It is the kind of honest, unglamorous ambition that reveals more about an academy’s culture than any trophy cabinet could.

The Business of building an academy:

Running a youth football academy in Kampala is not cheap, and Uplift does not pretend otherwise.

The academy is a tuition-funded operation. Players pay fees for training, and those fees are the primary source of revenue.

Gola Club, a sponsor, provides additional support through funding and equipment.

But Ayub is transparent about the fact that tuition alone is not enough to sustain the academy’s growing ambitions.

The leadership is actively seeking additional sponsors and partners who can help scale the program.

Kakembo Ali, Ayub’s childhood teammate and the academy’s Director of Operations, manages the day-to-day logistics.

The two have worked together since their playing days, and Ali takes on full operational responsibility whenever Ayub is traveling or managing the academy’s international relationships.

It is a lean operation. Two leaders, five coaches, more than 120 players, and a school pitch secured through partnership.

But it is also a deliberate one. Every piece of the academy’s structure, from the school partnership to the Goal Club connection to the scouting exhibitions, is designed to solve the specific problem Mugisha identified from his own career: the gap between Ugandan talent and international opportunity.

What comes next:

Mugisha does not talk about Uplift Soccer Academy the way most founders talk about their projects.

There is no grandiose vision statement, no five-year plan promising hundreds of European contracts.

There is a man who played professionally in four countries, came home, and built the thing he wished had existed when he was young.

Whether the academy’s model can sustain and scale will depend on funding, partnerships, and continued results on the scouting circuit.

The September 2025 exhibition proved the concept. The two players trialing in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) proved the pipeline can deliver.

The 120 kids showing up to a school pitch in Kibuli every weekend prove the demand.

The rest is a matter of time, resources, and the kind of stubbornness that makes a Ugandan kid dream about Manchester United in the first place.

Uplift Soccer Academy is based at Kibuli Secondary School, Kampala, Uganda.

Instagram: @upliftsocceracademy | YouTube: @UpliftSocceracademy | Facebook: Uplift Soccer Academy | TikTok: @upliftsocceracademy | Email: upliftsocceracademy@gmail.com

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