Uganda

Uganda is a country in central-eastern Africa. The country has sent baseball teams to the All-Africa Games. A team from Uganda qualified for the 2011 Little League World Series, the first African squad to do so, but was later found to have ineligible players and was replaced by a Saudi Arabian team.

The country's unlikely emergence in baseball circles led to a number of major league players, including Derrek Lee and Jimmy Rollins to donate money and equipment to grow the fledgling sport. The country continued to improve in baseball, sending teams to the 2012 Little League World Series and 2015 Little League World Series. In 2018, a team from Uganda played in the RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) World Series, a top-notch tournament aimed at players aged 13 to 15. The development continued when Uganda placed second in the 2019 Africa Cup Baseball Championship for their best finish to that point. Key hitters were Paul Wafula, Bernard Okello, George Drani and Isaac Odongo, while pitcher-manager Bernard Adei and Nicholas Alumai combined to throw a no-hitter versus Zimbabwe.

Another sign of growth was when the first two Ugandans signed with a MLB team, when the Los Angeles Dodgers signed Ben Serunkuma and Umar Male in 2022. South Africa and Nigeria had been the only African countries to have homegrown players sign with MLB teams before that (and Nigeria had only had two signees, 20 years previously).

People born here

• Umar Male, minor league outfielder
• Ben Serunkuma, minor league pitcher

Further Reading

• Kevin Baxter (Los Angeles Times): "Inside the 'secret' baseball academy the Dodgers are running in Uganda", Yahoo! News, May 4, 2023. [1]
• Michael Clair: "How Baseball at Heart is bringing the game and hope to young women in Uganda", mlb.com, March 30, 2024. [2]
• Jarrid Denney: "Uganda RBI finds support far from home: Team made long journey to participate in World Series", mlb.com, August 8, 2018. [3]
• John W. Miller: "In Africa, Out of Nowhere, There Is Baseball: How America’s Pastime Has Managed to Take Root in Uganda", The Wall Street Journal, December 25, 2014. [4]
• Geoffrey York: "Diamond mining in Africa: Along with a promising lode of talent on a new frontier, MLB-sponsored camps are unearthing lots of unexpected passion for the game", The Globe and Mail, December 21, 2016. [5]