Africell injects Shs 200 million into Uganda Marathon

Telecommunication company, Africell has injected Shs 200 million into this year’s Uganda Marathon race set for June 1 in Masaka.

The ceremony to hand over the cheque was held at the Africell headquarters along Clement Hill road in Kampala on Thursday.

Speaking to journalists, Africell Uganda CEO, Mohammad Ghaddar said that as part of the company’s corporate social responsibility, they ventured into supporting the needy children in greater Masaka region through the Uganda Marathon.

“We realised how important it is to support children through education because it is an important aspect of life. We thought by contributing towards the Uganda Marathon, we will be changing lives throughout the country,”Ghaddar said.

He added that improving education is a cause they believe in as a company, adding that they would continue sponsoring the marathon for a number of years.

Andrew Bownds, the Uganda Marathon country director said the long distance running event held in Masaka has helped build primary schools for locals in the greater Masaka area for the past four years.

“We focus on less privileged areas where we construct schools to reduce on the burden that children have to go through to find the nearest school. We have done this for the past four years through a marathon whose proceeds directly go for the above cause,”Bownds said.

He said that the shs200 million will help in logistics and also funding kits and prize money.

About the race

The Uganda Marathon is a long-distance running event held in Masaka to support community projects and was started in 2015 by a group of whites led by Andrew Bownds.

The long distance event has 42km, 21km and 10km races with the latter being for the disabled.