Fourteen-year-old swimmer Zara Marie Mbanga will represent Uganda at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, running from 31 October to 13 November in Senegal.
She will compete in the 50m breaststroke, 200m breaststroke, and 200m individual medley at the first Olympic event ever held on African soil.
A student at Shree Sahajanand School who swims for Jaguar Swim Club, Mbanga is a dependable mainstay of the Uganda national swimming team. She has represented the country at several Africa Aquatics Zone III and Zone IV Championships, gaining valuable regional racing experience.
“I’m very excited for the competition,” said Mbanga. “This is the first time that the Youth Olympics is going to be in Africa, and I’m very excited that it’s going to be on the continent where I’m from.”
Mbanga enters all three of her events with confidence and clear targets. “I believe that I’m very good at all of these races, and I have been working hard,” she said. “I hope to set personal bests, hopefully establish new national records, and make my country, my team, my parents, my coaches, and all my friends proud.”
Beyond the regional championships, Dakar 2026 will mark her second major global competition. Her first was the ISF World School Athletics, U15 Games in Serbia, where she raced against some of the best young swimmers in the world.
She expects to meet many of them again in Dakar. “This is an even bigger competition than the one I went to before,” Mbanga said. “I’m very happy that I was chosen to represent Uganda.”
