Uganda’s ambition to grow its economy tenfold from roughly $50 billion to $500 billion by 2040 demands more than incremental improvement. It requires a fundamental shift in how we identify, regulate and connect productive sectors.
The Tenfold Growth Strategy is clear: Uganda must expand exports, mobilise private investment, formalise more economic activities, deepen technology adoption and strengthen the country’s human, physical, financial and natural capital. It must also build stronger linkages across agro-industrialisation, tourism, minerals, and science, technology and innovation, the ATMS pillars.
Within this agenda, gaming deserves a more deliberate place in Uganda’s growth conversation. Gaming should not be viewed only as a source of revenue. If well facilitated, it can become a broader economic platform supporting employment, tourism, sports, hospitality, digital payments, media, technology and investment.
From a regulated industry to a growth asset
The direct contribution is already visible. Gaming sector revenues have risen from Shs17.4b in FY2015/16 to Shs323b in FY2024/25 an almost nineteen-fold increase in nine years. In FY2025/26 alone, the sector generated Shs368b, and this is expected to reach Shs450b in FY2026/27.
The industry also employs more than 24,000 Ugandans, provides rental income to over 2,500 property owners, and women account for more than 85% of its workforce. These figures matter, but they tell only part of the story. The larger opportunity lies in what a formal, transparent and technologically supervised gaming industry can enable around it.
Achieving tenfold growth will require Uganda to broaden its revenue base without placing an excessive burden on a narrow pool of taxpayers. It will also require more businesses, transactions and economic activities to operate within transparent, regulated and taxable systems.
Gaming can advance both objectives by bringing operators, premises, devices, payments and transactions into a more accountable regulatory framework. In this sense, the sector also provides a practical test of how fast-growing, technology-driven industries can be formalised without suppressing innovation, investment or enterprise.
The purpose of regulation, therefore, is not simply to constrain economic activity. It is to convert that activity into a legitimate, measurable and sustainable national value.
How gaming can accelerate Uganda’s ATMS growth agenda While gaming is not formally listed among the ATMS pillars, its cross-cutting contribution to each of them remains insufficiently understood and appreciated.
Too often, the sector is reduced to sports betting, yet gaming is a much broader economic ecosystem encompassing lotteries, casinos, online and mobile platforms, e-sports, digital payments, data analytics, cybersecurity, hospitality, entertainment, media, sports sponsorship, tourism and technology-enabled regulation.
Seen in this wider context, gaming is not a peripheral activity but a potential enabler of investment, jobs, innovation, destination development and economic formalisation. Its clearest connection is with tourism. Modern gaming economies increasingly combine casinos with hotels, restaurants, conventions, live entertainment, retail, sports and cultural experiences.
Uganda can selectively adapt this integrated approach around Kampala, Entebbe, Jinja and the Lake Victoria corridor and several other tourism corridors while linking visitors to the country’s wildlife, heritage, nightlife and conference tourism offering. This matters because Uganda is targeting tourism revenue growth from $1.45 billion (about Shs5.47 trillion) to $5b (about Shs18.87 trillion) by FY2028/29. Achieving that ambition will require more compelling reasons for visitors to stay longer, spend more and return.
Well-regulated entertainment and gaming destinations could complement wildlife and cultural tourism, strengthen Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) and sports tourism, and broaden Uganda’s appeal beyond traditional safari products.
Macau (an autonomous region on the south coast of China) offers perhaps the clearest illustration of both the economic power of gaming and the risks of allowing it to dominate a destination’s identity.
According to reports from the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, the regulatory body of gaming in Macau, in 2025, the territory welcomed more than 40 million visitors and generated MOP247.4b, approximately $30.9b (about Shs115.9 trillion), in gross gaming revenue. More instructive for Uganda, however, is Macau’s effort to use that gaming strength to diversify its wider tourism economy.
Under the ten-year concessions that took effect in 2023, its six casino operators committed MOP108.7 billion to developing international visitor markets and non-gaming projects more than ten times the amount committed to gaming investments.
These projects span conventions and exhibitions, entertainment, sporting events, culture and art, health and wellness, themed attractions, gastronomy and community tourism. South Africa presents a different and more geographically distributed model.
The country recorded gambling turnover of approximately R1.5 trillion approximately $86.5b (about Shs324.6 trillion) in FY2024/25, with betting accounting for about 75% and casinos contributing 19.5%.
Although casinos now represent a smaller share of gambling activity, many operate as components of broader destination properties that combine hotels, restaurants, conferencing, concerts, retail and family entertainment.
Their value to tourism therefore extends beyond the gaming floor to the wider hospitality, leisure and entertainment economy that develops around them. For Uganda, the lesson is not replication, but selective adaptation.