The betting slip in the school bag: gambling and Uganda’s young people
The law is clear enough on paper: Uganda’s Lotteries and Gaming Act, 2016 bars operators from taking money from anyone under 25 or letting them onto gambling premises. The street tells a different story. Betting shops sit within walking distance of schools and trading centres, the odds arrive on the same phones that homework does, and a stake can be smaller than the price of a chapati.
What the research found
In 2023, researchers surveyed 905 secondary-school students in Mbarara Municipality — average age about seventeen. Four in ten had gambled. Among those who had, more than four in ten showed signs of problem gambling; across the whole group of students, that worked out to roughly one in six. The same study noted what raises the risk: living within a kilometre of a gambling venue, having friends or parents who gamble, using alcohol or other substances, and — tellingly — serious psychological distress. The researchers’ blunt observation about the 2016 law: it is “rarely implemented.”
Why betting hooks the young
It is not stupidity, and treating it as stupidity helps nobody. For a young person facing an uncertain job market, a small stake against a big promised return can feel like the only investment on offer. The products themselves are built for repetition — near-misses that feel like almost-wins, instant results, another game always seconds away. A brain still developing its brakes meets an industry with none worth the name; the outcome is not a fair fight.
What a problem looks like — in a student, or anyone
Gambling becomes a problem when it stops being entertainment and starts being a need. The patterns are recognisable: chasing lost money with more money, betting with school fees or borrowed cash, hiding slips and betting apps, restlessness when not betting, and mood sinking as losses mount. In the Mbarara study these patterns travelled together with substance use and distress — which is a reminder that the bet is often not the whole story, but the visible part of it.
What parents, schools and communities can do
Shame closes the door; curiosity keeps it open. A young person who expects punishment will hide a problem until it is large; one who expects a conversation may bring it while it is still small. Schools can treat gambling the way they treat other health matters — something to teach about and screen for, not merely punish — and communities can at least insist that the law about proximity and age is worth enforcing. Behavioural addictions, including gambling, respond to the same assessment-first, therapy-based treatment as other addictions; that includes young people.
Our work with schools covers awareness sessions, screening and counselling support, and our guide to behavioural addictions explains treatment in plain language. To talk any of it through — as a parent, a teacher, or a student — the line is +256 770 700944, answered around the clock, any day.
Sources
Tamwesigire et al. (2023), Problem Gambling Among Adolescents in Uganda: a Cross-sectional Survey, Journal of Gambling Studies — 905 secondary students, Mbarara. · Lotteries and Gaming Act, 2016 (minimum age and premises provisions, as summarised in the same study).