Arts
Queen of Katwe Chess Still for Uganda’s Slum Chess Players
“Chess is a metaphor for life. There are challenges and surprises everywhere, but if you look closely, you can find opportunities, you can find your way through.”
This is an adage that highlights three of the graduates of the SomChess Academy, founded by Mr. Robert Katende, 21 years ago. “A bad move in chess means you will lose, just the same with life,” he added..
The most famous one now is Ms. Phiona Mutesi. Starting up with a single chessboard in 200, Katende then recruited her, then a nine-year-old, who had dropped out of school. Mutesi had sold maize in a street market. One day she followed her brother and discovered a project run by Sports Outreach Institute, a Christian-led sports mission, run by Katende.
Mutesi began playing chess. She went on to become a chess prodigy.
Mutesi represented Uganda at four Women’s Chess Olympiads, and is one of the first titled female players in Ugandan chess history. In 2012, a book was written by Mr. Tim Crothers and published about Mutesi. It is titled The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl’s Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster.
The famous Walt Disney Pictures optioned the rights to the book and worked on the 2016 film, Queen of Katwe. The film became famous being starred by Hollywood stars; Kenyan Lupita Nyong’o and British David Oyelowo. Mutesi is portrayed by Madina Nalwanga.
Mutesi has now graduated from Northwest University, which she did in May 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Management. From July 2021 to August 2023, she worked as a Business Strategy Analyst for Microsoft before becoming a Business Operations Analyst for Deloitte in Canada.
The royalties from the book have provided Mutesi and her family with financial security. Mutesi said, “I think the film was a 90 per cent portrayal of me.”
Another famous aspect of the film is the producer and director, Ms. Mira Nair. Nair is the wife of also famous Prof. Mahmood Mamdani, and their son, MR. Zohran Kwame Mamdani, who is becoming controversially famous in the US New York politics.
The second Katende Chess player is 18-year-old Ms. Patricia Kawuma. “Apart from winning school scholarships, this game has taught me how to strategise and plan ahead, and it instils discipline and patience.
“I have been actively participating in tournaments, allowing me to implement various strategies. This win not only signifies personal growth but also validates the effort of my coaches,” Kawuma stated.
She has represented Uganda in two international tournaments and has earned money by winning chess competitions. The prize money and sponsorships have enabled her to pay for her own school and for that of her siblings. But she has not yet reached the levels that Mutesi attained.
Uganda’s current junior chess champion, 19-year-old Master Jovan Kasozi – one of Katende’s protégés – has also not been as successful as Mutesi. Despite the Katende chess initiative paying towards his schooling, he has only been able to occasionally get funding from some well-wishers for extra chess training sessions.
However, last year he missed out on an international tournament because he could not raise US$400 for his air ticket. “I’m not giving up on chess, the game stimulates my mind, and it has made me very good at mathematics. It makes me think like a computer,” he says.
Katende is equally upbeat, saying that it may well be a long game when it comes to Disney. “Hopefully, they will break even,” he said.
Katende’s initiative has had more than 4,000 children go through his programmes over the last two decades, with some of them ending up becoming doctors, engineers and lawyers. He extended his chess club from Katwe to sessions within Ugandan prisons – and to slums in neighbouring Kenya and Rwanda, and those in countries as far as Angola, Botswana, Cameroon and Malawi.
Currently, more than 2,500 children and about 800 inmates are in his programmes, which help them to develop and make critical decisions, he says.
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