Mandela National Stadium



The Mandela National Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in Uganda. It is named after the former South African President and anti-apartheid icon, Nelson Mandela. The stadium's record attendance of 50,000 was set in 2004, in a football match between the national football teams of Uganda and South Africa.

Location
The stadium is located on Namboole Hill in Kira Municipality, Wakiso District. The stadium is approximately 11 km, by road, east of the central business district of Kampala, Uganda's capital and largest city.

Overview
Mandela National Stadium is mainly used for soccer matches, although other sports such as athletics are also practised. The stadium has a capacity of 45,202. The stadium is home to the Uganda national football team, known as the Uganda Cranes.

The stadium was built with a grant of US$36 million from the People's Republic of China (PRC). Originally it was called Namboole Stadium, getting its name from the hill on which it was built. It is now officially called Mandela National Stadium, named after the former South African president, Nelson Mandela. It was opened in 1997 with a concert by Lucky Dube, a reggae artist from South Africa. The stadium was refurbished in 2010–11, with a US$2.8 million grant from the PRC.

A committee of the Ugandan parliament reported in 2015 that the stadium was on the verge of financial collapse, claiming that the stadium had suffered from more than a decade of "mismanagement and wanton abuse" and incurred losses totaling UGX:3.6 billion. Running the stadium profitably in a private-public partnership arrangement remains a challenge.

In 2020, the stadium was blacklisted from hosting football matches due to a substandard state. The reconstruction works, taken by the UPDF Engineering Brigade, have started in 2022, including the installation of a permanent seats in the stadium, new dressing rooms, scoreboard, as well as refreshing the floodlights and the pitch.