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Queen of Katwe's gambit still in play for Uganda's slum chess players
Jun 29, 2025
Wycliffe Muia
BBC News, Kampala
A famous chess club in a slum of Uganda's capital that became the focus of the Hollywood movie Queen of Katwe is still producing champions - but faces a daily struggle to survive.
Run by chess coach Robert Katende, played by actor David Oyelowo in the Disney film released in 2016, he still believes that despite financial struggles he is managing to change children's lives for the better through chess.
"We use chess as a teaching tool. To identify the potential of the learners and guide them to their destiny," Mr Katende told the BBC on a visit to his SomChess Academy in Katwe, a poor neighbourhood of Kampala.
Shortly after graduating as a civil engineer, he first began volunteering in Katwe as a football coach before deciding on chess - starting up with a single chessboard in 2004 and a determination to help.
Within a year nine-year-old Phiona Mutesi, who had dropped out of school, joined up - and went on to become a chess prodigy.
She took the title of national women's junior champion three times, competed in several prestigious international chess Olympiads and by the age of 16 was given the title Woman Candidate Master by the World Chess Federation.
It was her remarkable story that was told in the film, with Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o playing her mother.
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