Uganda has clarified its new anti-gambling policy, saying it is only directed at international firms that have set up operations in the African nation.
On Monday, Ugandan state minister of finance for planning David Bahati announced that President Yoweri Musuveni had instructed him to issue no new gambling or betting licenses, while those licenses already issued wouldn’t be renewed once their current terms expire.
On Tuesday, Ugandan media quoted Finance Minister Matia Kasaija saying that the new policy was specifically targeted at ‘foreign’ sports betting companies that repatriate revenue from their local betting operations back to their base of operations outside Uganda.
Kasaija said the country was “not banning gaming. We’re saying this activity should be limited to only Ugandans. We have said that licensees that are running will not be renewed and new ones will not be issued to foreigners because we’ve discovered so much of our money is being exported through that gaming thing which as far as I am concerned has little value to the economy.”
The finance ministry’s Bahati offered a slightly different version of the government’s plan, telling the Daily Monitor that the government’s aim was “strengthening the regulatory framework” by reviewing the betting sector in order to “regulate the number of betting companies because there are complaints that they are mushrooming everywhere.”
Bahati said the government would use its review “to determine how many [betting operators] to license and where they should operate across the country.” Bahati offered no timeline for when this review might conclude but did say an official statement would be issued “sooner than later.”
While Bahati’s comments make it sound as if only retail betting operators are facing the axe, he confirmed that online betting operators would be included in the government’s review.
Among the international operators that have set up in Uganda is Betway, whose Samuel Mutekanga told the Monitor that the company hadn’t been consulted before the news broke. Mutekanga said the directive was “not only a surprise but shocking,” given the threat it poses to the company’s local operations.
Other operators protested that if President Musuveni’s primary concern was betting’s effect on Ugandan youth, then simply transferring their activity to Ugandan betting operators wouldn’t do much to accomplish this alleged goal.
Uganda’s government earned Shs37b (US$10m) from its sports betting sector in fiscal 2016-17 and had projected this sum to rise to Shs50b by 2019-20. It’s unclear how these projections would be affected if the government enacts its regulatory revamp as the finance minister suggested, particularly if some of the international firms mount legal challenges of the clearly protectionist proposal.
