Imagine watching your favorite Premier League match on a Saturday afternoon — and suddenly spotting “Visit Uganda” emblazoned across the chest of your team’s starting eleven.
It sounds like a dream. But Uganda’s Tourism Minister is treating it like a business meeting.
Susan Nakawuki Nsambu has gone on record confirming that her ministry is actively negotiating with Premier League clubs to have the Visit Uganda brand appear on their jerseys — a move that would put the East African nation in front of hundreds of millions of football fans worldwide, every single matchday.
Rwanda already proved this works. Now Uganda wants its turn — and the minister is not waiting around.
Nakawuki didn’t bury the headline. She came out and said it directly.
“We are negotiating with different teams in the Premier League so that we can also brand their jerseys with ‘Visit Uganda,'” she told the media, her tone carrying the kind of quiet confidence that suggests this conversation is already further along than most people realize.
She went further — name-dropping Arsenal specifically.
“We have so many fans here who have a passion for Arsenal, so if we are able to advertise with the team, it would be very helpful to market our country,” she added.
That one sentence alone sent Ugandan Arsenal supporters into a full spiral online.
But the Premier League push is only one piece of a much larger strategy the minister is assembling. Nakawuki revealed that the ministry is already working across multiple fronts — bloggers, print media, social media campaigns — casting as wide a net as possible to put Uganda on the global tourism map.
“We are also very keen on marketing on social media, and we are to negotiate with bloggers to help us market,” she said. “We are ready to use any opportunity to market our country because that is what was missing.”
That last phrase — “that is what was missing” — landed like a quiet admission that Uganda’s tourism potential has long outpaced its visibility. The gorillas, the landscapes, the culture — all world-class. The global marketing? Playing catch-up.
And then things got really interesting.
Because the minister didn’t just pitch a vision. She pointed directly at a neighbor who has already cashed in on this exact playbook — and made clear that Uganda is ready to follow suit, fast.
For anyone unfamiliar with the template Uganda is working from, Rwanda figured this out years ago.
“Visit Rwanda” has appeared on the training kits and jerseys of Arsenal FC since 2018 — a partnership that put the small Central African nation in front of Arsenal’s global fanbase of over 900 million people. The deal was widely credited with significantly boosting Rwanda’s international tourism profile and reframing how the world perceived the country.
The results were visible. Tourist arrivals increased. International coverage shifted. And suddenly, “Visit Rwanda” wasn’t just a slogan — it was a brand recognized on every continent where people watch football.
Uganda, sitting on some of Africa’s most extraordinary natural and cultural treasures — including being home to over half the world’s remaining mountain gorillas — has watched that success story closely. Minister Nakawuki’s announcement signals that the country is done watching from the sidelines.
Susan Nakawuki Nsambu serves as Uganda’s Minister of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities, and has been vocal about the urgent need to aggressively reposition Uganda as a must-visit global destination.
The moment the minister’s words hit the internet, Ugandan football fans lost their composure — in the best possible way.
Fans immediately noticed the Arsenal mention, and the reactions were instant and chaotic. The idea of seeing “Visit Uganda” on an Arsenal jersey — worn by some of the biggest names in world football, broadcast into living rooms across Europe, Asia, and the Americas — felt almost too good to be true.
Within hours, the conversation had spread across Twitter/X, Facebook, and WhatsApp groups, with supporters tagging friends, sharing the clip, and debating which club Uganda should target first. The internet had thoughts, and they were absolutely not holding back — some users even mocking up concept jersey designs and posting them online.
The hashtag energy around Uganda and Premier League was undeniable — a rare moment where tourism policy became genuinely exciting content.
The public reaction split into enthusiastic camps almost immediately.
Arsenal fans in Uganda were loudest — many expressing that a “Visit Uganda” x Arsenal partnership would be a full-circle cultural moment, given how deeply the club is embedded in Ugandan football culture.
Some fans believe negotiations may already be more advanced than the minister’s carefully worded statement let on. It’s unclear exactly which clubs have been approached or how far talks have progressed, but the specific mention of Arsenal by name was not lost on anyone.
A section of commenters raised practical questions — about cost, about return on investment, about whether the government has the budget to compete in a space where jersey sponsorships run into tens of millions of dollars annually. Others pointed directly at Rwanda’s success and argued the numbers speak for themselves.
Sources close to the tourism sector say the momentum behind this push feels different from previous announcements — more structured, more urgent, more real.
There’s something quietly powerful about what this announcement represents beyond the politics and the negotiations.
Uganda is a country where millions of people wake up every Saturday and Sunday to watch Premier League football — cheering for clubs thousands of miles away with a passion that rivals any fanbase in England itself. For those supporters, seeing their country’s name on the jersey of a team they love wouldn’t just be tourism marketing.
It would feel like recognition. Like the world finally looking back.
That emotional weight is exactly what makes this campaign — if it succeeds — potentially more powerful than any billboard or travel brochure ever could be.
Here’s the twist nobody is saying loudly enough: Uganda is negotiating to pay a Premier League club to carry its name — while millions of Ugandan fans have been giving those same clubs free love, free loyalty, and free passion for decades.
Somewhere in that irony is the smartest tourism pitch Uganda has ever made.
Rwanda put its name on Arsenal’s chest and watched the tourists come — now Uganda is knocking on the same door, and honestly, it’s about time. Which Premier League club do you think should carry the “Visit Uganda” badge? Drop it in the comments.