“Winning, and only winning.” That is how new head coach Andrew Mugagga answered when asked what his plan is for Bugema University’s men’s football team. No mention of rebuilding. No mention of patience. Just those four words, delivered like a man who has already made peace with the pressure that comes with them. And today, the team he now leads finally looked the part too, the men’s and women’s sides unveiling brand new jerseys and training kits courtesy of CK Sports Center, to a room full of players who could barely contain themselves. There was laughter, there was pride, there was that unmistakable buzz of people who know something is about to change.
Football Men
Football Ladies
Volleyball
Behind the sponsorship is a story that almost writes itself. Kagoda Charles, the man behind CK Sports Center, is no outsider writing a check and disappearing into the crowd. He walked these same fields. He is a Bugema University alumnus and, by his own reckoning, one of the most decorated footballers the University has ever produced: five medals, two third-place finishes, a first-place finish, in AUUS 2023 , and the East Africa University Games trophy in 2022 in his cabinet, he has also been the captain of this team from 2020 till 2025. He left Bugema with a Bachelor’s degree in Networking in one hand and a football legacy in the other. Now he is back, this time footing the bill for two years of jerseys and training kits. Ask him why, and he does not overthink it: goodwill, he says, and the simple fact that Bugema has been there for him since day one.
There is something almost poetic about it, a boy who once wore the jersey now paying for the ones his juniors will wear.
Then there is the coach standing at the center of it all, and his story is one of a man who has quietly built a life around this game, first as a player, now as someone who shapes players of his own. The move comes after Bugema University parted ways with Nyanzi Meddie, who had led the men’s team for over ten years, a decade-long stretch that made his exit feel like the end of an era for the football program. Stepping into those shoes is Mugagga, arriving fresh off his role as Head Coach of Mawogola in the Masaza Cup, and carrying with him experience as Technical Director of Buganda, the regional side under UWA.
Football Manager (Masereka Robbinson) on the left, Head Coach (Andrew Mugagga) on the right.
Contract Signing
Andrew Mugagga’s playing days read like a map of East African football. He wore the colors of AFC Leopards in Kenya’s Premier League, before crossing into Uganda with Kangemi United, Masaka Local Council and Sifa United in the country’s top flight, and later took his boots to Tanzania, turning out for Vodacom and Pan African in the Tanzanian Premier League. Three countries, three football cultures, one man learning the game from every angle it could be taught.
It is that journey, player in three countries, coach across just as many battlegrounds, that Mugagga now brings to Bugema, and from the sound of it, he did not come to settle in slowly. He said it himself, and he meant it. “Winning. Only winning”. With all this, Bugema University football fans have every reason to expect fireworks this season.
