Uganda Blocks 23 Illegal Gambling Websites: What South Africa Can Learn

What Uganda announced on 27 October 2026

Uganda's gambling regulator says it has blocked 23 unlicensed gaming websites and destroyed 6,749 illegal gaming machines in 2026. The figures were reported on 27 October 2026 by Focus Gaming News Africa, which attributes them to the National Lotteries and Gaming Regulatory Board (NLGRB). The machines were valued at UGX 6.21 billion, about US$1.7 million, and the report says they were destroyed under court orders.

The same report adds some useful context. The regulator has seized 10,020 machines over the past five years. In the three years to June 2026 it prosecuted 24 operators, importers and suppliers linked to unlawful gaming, and 21 of those cases ended in convictions, with three still pending. The accused included 19 Ugandan nationals and five Chinese nationals. In the 2025/26 financial year the board also received 125 consumer complaints involving UGX 2.66 billion, and says it resolved 112 of them.

This is a story about Uganda, not South Africa. We are covering it because it is a working example of something the National Gambling Board (NGB) has said it wants to try here: stopping people reaching offshore gambling sites by having internet providers block them. Seeing how another African regulator has done it, and how little is publicly known about the results, helps South African players judge what a blocking regime could and could not change.

A note on sourcing. Everything about Uganda below comes from Focus Gaming News Africa's reporting of the regulator's statements. We have not seen the NLGRB's own report, so treat the numbers as the regulator's claims as relayed by a trade outlet, not as audited figures.

It is also worth saying what the numbers do not tell us. A count of 23 blocked websites says nothing about how many players used them, how much they staked, or whether the operators simply moved to a new address afterwards. The machine figures are easier to picture because a seized slot machine is a physical object, but they too cover only the supply side. Readers should keep that gap in mind when a regulator announces a large total: it describes effort, and effort is not the same thing as harm prevented.

How the Ugandan blocking process works

The mechanism is simple to describe. According to Focus Gaming News Africa's report on a parliamentary hearing, the NLGRB identifies an illegal gaming website and passes it to the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC). The UCC then works with telecommunications companies and internet service providers to cut off access.

That hearing took place on Wednesday 26 August, when the regulator appeared before Parliament's Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) to answer points raised in the Auditor General's report for 2024/25. Lawmakers asked the board to tighten monitoring and enforcement, especially outside the main urban centres. The same report says the NLGRB has previously estimated that about 93 per cent of gaming activity in Uganda happens online and only 7 per cent in physical outlets.

That split explains why blocking matters to the regulator. A shop with slot machines can be raided. A website run from abroad cannot, so the only practical lever is to make it harder for people inside the country to load it.

Earlier in the year the regulator also went to the telecoms industry directly. Focus Gaming News Africa reported that on 11 June the NLGRB took part in a UCC stakeholder meeting with licensed telecom operators. Its chief executive, Denis Mudene, called for stronger cooperation between the gaming regulator, the communications regulator and licensed internet providers. The report says the idea is to improve information sharing between regulators and network providers so that unlicensed platforms can be identified and disrupted. It also mentions that the NLGRB and the Uganda Revenue Authority launched a central electronic monitoring system earlier in the year to track gaming transactions.

The physical crackdown running alongside it

The website blocking sits next to a much more visible campaign against machines. Focus Gaming News Africa reported on 19 October that the NLGRB and the Uganda Police Force confiscated more than 170 illegal gaming machines across 11 districts, including Ibanda, Mbarara, Kabale, Masaka, Pallisa, Apac and Oyam. The seizures were part of Operation Mashine Haramu, a campaign aimed at illegal machines and at the operators, suppliers and manufacturers behind them. The report says the operation followed a September seizure of more than 123 machines in the Greater Katonga region.

The penalties are spelled out. The report cites Section 67(1) of Uganda's Lotteries and Gaming Act, 2016: making gaming or betting machines available for use without a licence is an offence punishable by a fine of up to UGX 960,000 (about US$232), imprisonment for up to two years, or both. The regulator asked the public to report suspected illegal activity and to check operators against its published register of licensed gaming companies.

Two things stand out. First, the targets of the criminal side are suppliers and operators, not ordinary players. Second, the regulator leans on tips from police commanders, local leaders and the public, which suggests that even in a country with a dedicated blocking process, enforcement still depends heavily on people on the ground.

What South Africa has actually announced so far

South Africa is earlier in the process. The NGB published an expression of interest on 30 June 2026 for a monitoring, tracking, blocking and reporting solution to detect and prevent illicit gambling activity online, and amended it with an erratum on 17 July. Both are recorded on the NGB's own notice. We went through the details in our earlier post, what the NGB plan to block illegal gambling websites changes for SA players.

The key point is that an expression of interest is a request for providers to say what they could offer. It is not a contract, and it does not by itself block a single site. Nothing on the NGB notice we checked says a blocking service has been chosen or switched on.

Online casino games remain unlawful for operators under the National Gambling Act. Our South Africa legal overview explains the difference between a casino being unlicensed in South Africa and a casino that still accepts South African players, which is a distinction every player should keep in mind. Blocking, if it ever arrives, would target the second group.

Where the internet providers stand

The Internet Service Providers' Association of South Africa (ISPA) has already said how it sees this. In a press release dated 2 July 2026 it published a position paper on internet blocking, issued after the NGB asked the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies to implement blocking against offshore gambling platforms. ISPA accepts that some illegal content may have to be blocked, but argues it should only happen inside a clear legislative framework.

Its paper sets out five principles: blocking orders should come from a court or judge rather than an administrative body; any obligations should be publicly disclosed; measures should be time limited and reviewed; providers should not have to modify their networks; and costs should be shared fairly. It also describes three technical approaches, domain name blocking, IP address blocking and packet inspection, and says the first two are relatively easy for a technically capable user to get around, for example with a VPN.

Put the two countries side by side and the gap is clear. Uganda describes a regulator-to-regulator process with the UCC and the telecom companies. ISPA's South African position asks for a court-led route written into law. That is our reading of the two sets of documents, not a legal opinion, and we cannot say how a South African process would end up. What the comparison does show is that the question of who orders the block is the sticking point in South Africa, and the Ugandan reporting does not tell us how that question was settled there.

What blocking can and cannot do for players

It helps to be realistic. Here is our reading of what the evidence supports.

• It raises friction, not a wall. ISPA itself says domain and IP blocks can be bypassed. Uganda's 23 blocked sites are a count of sites, not a measure of how many people were stopped from using them, and the reporting gives no such figure.
• It does not make a site safe or unsafe. A site that is still reachable is not thereby licensed. A site that is blocked was, in the regulator's view, unlicensed. Neither tells you whether a casino pays out.
• It does not change what you owe or risk. The criminal cases described in Uganda are aimed at operators, importers and suppliers. The reporting we read does not describe action against individual players, and we are not claiming any.
• It cannot recover money. If an unlicensed site holds your balance and then disappears or gets blocked, a block does not return it.

The practical lesson for South African players is to do the licence check yourself and not to assume that being able to load a site means anything about its status. Our guide to FICA verification at online casinos shows what a normal identity check looks like, which is a useful baseline: a site that asks you to send money first and never asks who you are deserves extra caution.

Questions to ask of any South African blocking plan

This section is our own reading, not reporting. If the NGB does move from its expression of interest to a real blocking system, these are the questions we would want answered, and the Ugandan coverage leaves most of them open.

Who decides which sites go on the list? In Uganda the NLGRB identifies the sites. ISPA wants South African orders to come from a court. Those are very different safeguards, and a player has a stake in which one applies, because a wrongly blocked site is a real cost for the people and businesses behind it.

Is the list public? ISPA's second principle is mandatory public disclosure, so citizens know how far their access is being limited. The Ugandan reports give a number of blocked sites but, in the articles we read, not the list itself. A public list would also be useful to players, because it would double as a warning.

How long does a block last? ISPA argues blocks should be time limited and reviewed. Operators can move to a new web address quickly, so a block that never gets refreshed stops meaning much. Whether Uganda re-checks its 23 sites is not stated in the sources we read.

What happens to the player's money? This is the question that matters most to you and the one regulators talk about least. A block stops a page loading. It does not freeze a balance, reverse a deposit or force a payout. Anyone holding funds at an offshore site that later disappears from view is in the same position as before, which is why withdrawing winnings regularly and never keeping more on an account than you are happy to lose remains sensible.

What does it cost and who pays? ISPA's fifth principle says providers should not be left out of pocket. Any cost that lands on internet providers can eventually land on customers, so it is fair to ask how a blocking system would be funded before it is built.

The wider South African picture to watch

Blocking is one strand in a larger set of changes. On the money side, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement on 21 October 2026 that consultations on the proposed National Online Gambling Tax are ongoing, covering its design, its links to the existing regulatory framework and the effect on provinces and the currently regulated market. He said the final design will be announced in the February 2027 Budget. Nothing in that passage changes the legal status of online casinos.

So the sensible things to watch are these:

• Whether the NGB follows its expression of interest with a formal request for proposals.
• Whether any blocking power is tied to a court process, as ISPA wants, or to the regulator alone.
• What Treasury announces in February 2027 on the online gambling tax design.
• Whether Uganda or the NLGRB publishes a fuller report on how many blocked sites came back under new addresses.

Until any of that happens, nothing about your own position as a player has changed. If gambling is costing you more than you planned, our responsible gambling page lists support options and tools, and gambling should only ever be treated as entertainment with real risk of loss.

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