CAF has thrown the gauntlet. The winner will get $11.5 million and each of the 24 participating clubs each year will get $3.5 million. In total, $100 million will be used as prize money.

It’s the new Africa Super League slated to start August 2023; to be played over eight months between August and May.

To put context to CAF’s latest innovation, the winner will earn four and a half times more than what the current winner of the CAF Champions League earns ($2.5 million) and the lowest earner in the group stage of the champions league ($550,000) will now earn six times more in the Africa Super League ($3.5 million). These are mind-boggling sums that should whet the appetite of every ambitious club in all regions of Africa.

What it means for Uganda though is up for debate. If the main objective of the new competition is to transform African football into world-class to be weighted on the same platform as Europe, the question is whether Ugandan clubs should start dreaming of being beneficiaries in this new African adventure.

Only one Ugandan club – KCCA FC – has ever qualified for the last 16 (group stage) of the CAF Champions League, which is the poorer version of the new Super League. For that achievement, FUFA earned about $35,000. The year was 2018. In contrast, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria have three clubs that have won the Champions League which has been won by 26 clubs in total. Not surprisingly, Ugandan clubs do not belong to this exclusive club. In the old knock-out format when it was still the African Cup of Champions Clubs, two Ugandan clubs; Simba and SC Villa, were losing finalists in 1971 and 1991 respectively.

 The business side of football; which is commercialization, is a concept Ugandan clubs have completely failed or refused to understand. Just now - the year 2022 - in preparation for the new season, clubs are still struggling to comply with basic mandatory requirements to fulfill before they get issued a club license to participate in the StarTimes Uganda Premier League 2022-23. As of today, 13 clubs have only been issued provisional licenses. There is one, Kyetume FC, which has no single player on the FUFA Connect System.

While many of us believed the Uganda Premier League is now a professional league, the clubs themselves have consistently demonstrated their unreadiness to upgrade to that status. With the exception of Vipers and KCCA who are trying their best within their means to aim as high as possible in the professionalizing of their setups to match their ambitions, the rest don’t even have a dream. One wonders therefore whether the Africa Super League; exciting news though it is, means anything to Ugandan football. Our clubs have failed to position to give themselves a chance to dream.  

The chorus of  ‘we don’t have money is well rehearsed and has been the theme for Ugandan clubs for as long as football has been the front liner in sports. Thanks to the amateurish way of running the clubs, the lack of structure, the failure to modernise systems, the inability to pay player salaries, the absence of marketing, the poor quality of players, the lack of corporate governance values and principles, no one can put a value to the Uganda Premier League. Likewise, no one can put a value on the individual clubs. What criteria then, clubs use to buy players in the transfer market or pay salaries for those who can afford to pay, remains a mystery.

To earn the minimum of $3.5 million from the Africa Super League, a club needs to have qualified to participate among the 24 targeted clubs. Maybe it’s time for Vipers and KCCA  to seriously consider paying the big money for the big players from across Africa. Without heavy investment in players and coaches, the Africa Super League will remain just a story in Ugandan football and FUFA seems helpless to influence this.