About Us – KJ Team

Our History

Our founder, Kabugo Mansoor, started KJT in 2003 when he was just a young man himself. From the very start, he recognised the power of sports to transform the lives of those disadvantaged youngsters all around him. “Transforming Young Lives in Communities” has been part of the KJT mission since the early days, when Kabugo and the first 8 players would go out to train without anything but some boots and a pair of footballs. A journey which started in the grounds of Nakivubo Blue Primary School, with the simple goal of providing support and opportunity to some of the poorest children in the country, has now led KJT to the position which we proudly occupy now in the footballing landscape of Uganda.

Our Present

From those first 8 kids, KJT has now grown to provide support and sports education to over 400 students from various backgrounds, but always with the mission of helping those least privileged children in the city and country in general work for a better life. We now have a home in Kisenyi, Kampala where up to 300 of our kids live and eat together. Further, we are very proud to be able to point to a number of sporting success stories who have passed through KJT; most notably Farouk Miya, Moses Waiswa, Mohammad Shaban, Kezirone Kizito and Salim Jamal, all of whom trained with KJT as youngsters and who have gone on to star for the Uganda Cranes National Team. We have expanded our recruitment too, as many better-off families have seen the structure and values of KTJ as beneficial to their own children. It is in part due to their financial support that KJT continues to exist and thrive as not only one of the main production lines of Ugandan footballing talent, but also a vital community service in and around Kampala.

Our Future

We have many hopes and plans for KJT going forward, but the most important thing for us right now is to work towards expanding our ability to house our children. We plan to construct a home for over 100 children as soon as the funds are available, so that they not only have somewhere to live but most importantly they can have somewhere to call home. Another immediate plan is the opening of a Sport Centre Shop; through this shop we plan to sell merchandise benefiting not only KJT but also local schools, communities and also other academies.
Our longer term plans are ambitious – we would like to be able to build a fully residential hostel for both KJT Academy and Club players around 30 miles from the centre of Kampala. Our goal for this residence is to be able to house around 500 athletes and provide them with regular meals, we would also like to construct a football field or fields nearby so that we can concentrate our training and housing facilities. In addition to this KJT aims to acquire a shuttle bus with which can transport our players and staff to and from games and nearby tournaments.
Given the success of KJT at producing quality players, we expect than within a few years we will be actively involved in player trading in the form of sales. As KJT is known as a place to find talented footballers, top clubs domestically and abroad have begun to take an interest in our older players with thoughts of buying their contracts and turning them fully professional. Our target would be to transfer 1 of our players per year to a top global league.

KJT and the Cranes

Kampala Junior Team (KJT) remains the country’s best football academy. Farouk Miya, whose historical goal against Comoros on September 4, 2016, ensured the Cranes returned to the Africa Cup of Nations finals after 39 years is just one of so many products from KJT. Miya and many other’s footballing roots can be traced from KJT, which was established by Mansoor Kabugo in 2003 at Nakivubo Blue Primary School ground. Kabugo started with eight players (seven boys and one girl) namely; Joel Ongom, Ronald Ssekatebe, Lutalo Bbosa Daniel, Gerald Segawa, Henry Byaruhanga, Jorum Sekyewa, Amon Sendiwanyo and Zaina Nabatanzi, but now has over 400 in the ‘academy’. “My vision was simply to help the disadvantaged youth from my neighbourhood because being a slum we had many orphans and homeless youth. But it was challenging because I was still young and only had two balls with no bibs and jerseys but I used to persevere,” Kabugo says. His passion for football from primary and secondary school and with Nakivubo boys had seen him buy his own ball which endeared him to many. It is that ball that would attract other.