Meet Isaiah Mwesige: A man on a mission to bring golf to Uganda

Isaiah Mwesige was only 11 years old when his life was turned upside down. Having lost his father eight years earlier, he suffered the incomparable tragedy of his mother dying from cancer.

An orphan before he had even reached his teens, the third-youngest of eight children moved in with one of his older brothers in the staff quarters of the local school. At a time when most children his age have barely a care in the world, his priority became earning enough money to survive.

Uganda is a tough place to grow up. Still bearing the scars of Idi Amin’s brutal dictatorship, as well its involvement in various conflicts both at home and further afield, it has endured years of instability on one hand, including accusations of political corruption, whilst, on the other, trying to tackle widespread population displacement, child slavery, and other such crimes against humanity.

In the mid-1990s, when Isaiah was born, more than half the population lived below the national poverty line and, whilst that fell over the next decade to around 20%, it is rising again.

A report published in May this year ranked it 24th amongst the world’s poorest countries, worse off than the likes of Sudan, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. Over two-thirds of the population live on less than $3.10 per day, with a 2018 estimate putting the average life expectancy at 56 years.

• How much does it cost for a brand to put its logo on a golfer?

The median age of the (booming) population? Just sixteen.

And yet, to meet Isaiah, you would never know the extent of the struggles he has endured. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t whine. Rather, he has a smile as wide as the Nile and a disposition sunnier than the Sahara. He is a radiant, effervescent gem of a soul, with a huge heart, unimpeachable manners, and an aspirational work ethic.

His story began when he went hunting for lost golf balls.

“After my parents died, I knew I had to find work,” he says. “So, I tried to find ways to make money. One day, a friend told me he was a caddie at a nearby golf course and he suggested that I could do it, too. I didn’t know anything about golf at that time. I had to ask him, ‘So what does golf entail? What does a caddie do?’

“He explained and said that caddies earned about £1, which was around 5,000 Ugandan shillings. That was a lot of money, enough to buy your breakfast and lunch for the whole week.

“I told my brother but he was a bit scared. He said, ‘Isaiah, nobody in our family has ever played golf before. Nobody has ever been to the golf club before. Who are you even going to be there with?’ But I managed to convince him to let me try.”

The course was Toro, a nine-hole track built in the early part of the 20th century by British colonists and located in the city of Fort Portal, some seven kilometres from where Isaiah lived. “Many days,” he recalls, “I had to walk there and back.”

On that first day, Isaiah encountered his first hurdle. “The caddie master said to me, ‘You are a new person, you can’t carry a bag until you learn about how to conduct yourself and you will need to learn from other caddies.’ I said, ‘Okay, but is there anything else I can do just now so that I can go back home with some money?’”

That’s when he started collecting golf balls. “There is a big ravine that cuts through the middle of the third hole known as the ‘Valley of Tears’,” he explains. “Lots of balls were lost in there, so I made it my mission to try and find them. I knew that if I did, I could sell them back to members.

• We played the Old Course backwards. It was… interesting!

“Towards the end of my first day, I finally found one and sold it back to a golfer for less than half a pound. I remember how proud I was when I got home that night. My brother agreed that I could go back to the club at the weekends, so long as I continued to work hard at school. The next day, I went into school with my money and bought my own breakfast and lunch for the first time.”

As time wore on, Isaiah got bigger, stronger and was able to combine hunting for balls with the guaranteed income of caddying. He became a popular and well-known face around Toro, so much so that he was invited to become an ‘artisan’.

In return for doing some work around the club, he was allowed to play the course for free, quickly becoming a single-digit handicapper in the process. Later, he became ‘Head of Artisans, assuming responsibility for organising the juniors, tree-planting, and assigning course maintenance tasks.

In recognition of the job he did, the club helped Isaiah study for a Bachelor’s Degree in agricultural science, sending him first to Jeonbuk National University in South Korea and then, briefly, to Salford University in the UK. With his new-found skills and confidence, he decided to give something back, both to the club and youngsters just like him, by creating what is now called the Afriyea Golf Academy.

“The Toro club used to produce very many players for the national team but, by 2019, we had only two,” he recalls. “I sat and asked myself what was happening and I quickly realised that there was no real structured programme for juniors. I thought, ‘Maybe I could start a golf academy.’ But I didn’t want it to only offer golf. I wanted it to teach about things like environmental sustainability, having a purpose in life and those kinds of values. I wanted it to provide a more holistic and rounded approach.

“I also wanted it to be available to kids from under-privileged and vulnerable families. Here, the game is still mostly played by people who are really quite well off. I wanted the academy to offer opportunities for minorities, for those who are marginalised. I wanted to give them the opportunity to prosper like I have. That was very important to me.”

Isaiah enlisted the support of fellow Toro club members as well as former national team coach Stephen Kasaija and, in September 2020, held the first academy coaching event. Over 30 children showed up that day, ranging in age from four to 22. “That was very exciting,” smiles Isaiah. “It was a very good day.”

Fast forward to today and the Afriyea Golf Academy is thriving. It is currently teaching golf – for free – to more than 1,000 children from 21 different schools. “But that’s not including all of the outreach programs and annexes we’ve set up at provincial golf clubs in other parts of the country, such as Masindi Golf in mid-western Uganda,” adds Isaiah. “So, the real number is much higher.”

It runs a variety of different programs, catering to juniors, schools, girls, golfers with disabilities and more. There’s also a ‘Parents in Golf’ program, which focuses on how parents can best support their children before, during and after competitions, whilst the Street Golf program is a first-of-its-kind initiative that takes golf into communities – often impoverished and deprived communities – in order to make the sport more inclusive and accessible.

In December 2021, Afriyea staged its first-ever junior golf competition at Toro Golf, attracting 51 participants, including two from Kampala and three from the Kilembe Mines Golf Club in Kasese, around an hour-and-a-half from Fort Portal.

Three-time Uganda Amateur champion Ronald Otile and the reigning champion Joseph Cwinyaai was amongst those in attendance, along with various other local dignitaries.

• Turning the tide: How golf courses are tackling coastal erosion.

The purpose of the academy is clear: to become the clear, outright, No.1 golf academy for junior golfers in Africa, providing golf and social opportunities at national and international levels. Underpinning everything it does are seven core values: academic excellence, hard work, inclusiveness, accountability, friendliness, sportsmanship, and environmental consciousness.

The latter is something that is particularly important to Isaiah, so much so that, each month, he and his fellow coaches and academy members carry out a clean-up campaign around the Mpanga river.

One of the longest rivers in the region, spanning around 240 kilometres, it crosses seven different districts, collecting all kinds of rubbish and plastic along the way. Isaiah and Co. have taken it upon themselves to physically remove all that.

“It was a good way to spread awareness of the academy when we first started,” he says. “Almost a bit like a marketing exercise, I suppose you could say. But it is a subject that is very important to me and that, honestly, should be important to all of us.

“Plastics, in particular, have many uses but our generation has become addicted to single-use plastics, which can have severe consequences on the environment. We can all do more to reduce pollution and protect our more invaluable asset, nature.”

This commitment earned Afriyea a special recognition award at the 2023 Golf Environment Awards and is one of the many ways it is trying to deliver positive, tangible, meaningful change.

“For me, golf is a miracle,” adds Isaiah. “I have seen and experienced how it can positively impact the life of someone, whether you want to become a player, or work in the industry as, say, a journalist, or a golf course superintendent. It can open so many doors but sometimes you need somebody to first open one for you. That is why we exist.”

Incredibly, Isaiah is making all of this work with absolutely zero support from the Uganda Golf Union. Instead, he has largely financed the project by himself, topped up with donations from generous benefactors and fundraising events.

“My big ambition, my ten-year mission I suppose, is to produce a player who is capable of competing on the international stage,” he says. “Whether that is The Open, or the Masters, or maybe even the Olympics, who knows? But this would really inspire a lot of the other kids and give us a platform to say, ‘Look, these are the roots. This is where they came from.’

The more immediate goal, however, is to create a permanent home for Afriyea. As of now, it continues to operate out of the Toro Golf Club, making use of the limited facilities on offer.

“It can be difficult when competitions are on because the club can become very congested which makes it hard to teach the children or give them space to practise,” says Isaiah. “So, building a permanent, bespoke centre would be the next step for us. Something a bit like a modern driving range where they can have all the access they need.”

• Behold! The greatest driver never made!

Creating interest is only part of the challenge. Sustaining it is another matter. That’s where having golf on television is so important but, as Isaiah says, that, too, comes at a cost.

“The television channels that show golf here are very, very expensive. We do have televisions in the club that show it but it closes to children at a certain point, which is very understandable. For the most part, the only golf a lot of them can access is on YouTube or on social media.”

The incredible work done by Isaiah specifically and Afriyea more broadly has captured the imagination of various organisations around the world, leading to partnerships being formed with the 3 Hammers Golf Academy in Staffordshire, Center of Gravity Golf Inc. Canada, and even the R&A.

This summer, Isaiah even attended The Open Championship at Royal Troon as an advocate of sustainability in golf, making an appearance on Sky Sports during the live coverage of the third round.

So much incredible work has been done, is being done, and is planned. But Afriyea needs your help. The academy’s website has a shop where, amongst other things, you can buy a packet of fully biodegradable golf tees made from high quality biomaterial and coffee waste.

You can also donate to help the academy continue its remarkable work or sponsor one of its players, such as Rachael Natukunda, an exciting young player who represented Uganda earlier this year at the All-Africa Junior Golf Championship.

“It would be wonderful if somebody reading this would consider donating to our work,” says Isaiah. “Even gloves or equipment, those are things that would be able to go a long way. We’ve come a long way in a short space of time but our work is only just beginning. There is much more to do.”

—

This feature first appeared in issue 215 of bunkered. For more content like this, why not take out a subscription? International subscriptions also available.

Michael McEwan is the Deputy Editor of bunkered and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Deputy Editor