Pétanque in Uganda

Uganda appears, by name only, on the FIPJP's list of affiliated federations in Africa, alongside around two dozen other African nations including Senegal, Mauritius, Gabon, and Libya. Beyond that listing, we could not independently verify an active domestic pétanque federation, a named president, a club network, or a competition result for a Ugandan team.

The African confederation itself has been split since January 2025, when a general assembly in Dakar renamed it the Confédération Africaine du Sport de la Pétanque (CASP) after a petition signed by 17 of its 24 member federations. Comorian newspaper Al-Watwan reported that Uganda, along with Chad, Togo, and Zambia, did not respond to that petition. The long-standing Confédération Africaine des Sports Boules (CASB), led by Idrissou Ibrahima of Benin, contested the move. On 21 May 2026 the Court of Arbitration for Sport annulled FIPJP's withdrawal of recognition from CASB while holding that this reinstatement does not exclude CASP from the FIPJP, and two days later, on 23 May 2026 in Abidjan, CASP elected Mahmoud Archane, former president of Morocco's pétanque federation, as its president. The two bodies remained split as of autumn 2026.

What We Could Verify

The FIPJP's African federations page names Uganda among its affiliated members, but unlike most entries it gives no federation name, address, officials, or contact details. Uganda's National Council of Sports, the statutory body that regulates sports federations domestically, recognizes dozens of associations covering sports from football to woodball, but our searches did not turn up a boules or pétanque entry among them, nor a listing on the Uganda Olympic Committee's federations page. We also found no named federation official and no press coverage of a Ugandan team or player competing at a zone, African, or World Championship.

Why the Gap

This pattern, a nominal seat in the continental confederation without a visible domestic competition structure, mirrors what we've found for other smaller CASB/CASP members (see Kenya for a comparable East African case, Djibouti for a case with more evidence of grassroots play, or Palau for a similar gap in a different confederation). It's possible organized pétanque exists in Uganda through informal expatriate or diaspora play without yet having a documented federation presence online.

We will update this page as soon as we can verify a federation, club, or competition record for Uganda from a citable primary source.