Aggrey Awori

Before a lengthy career in economics and politics Aggrey Awori had a promising career in track and field athletics and represented Uganda at two Olympic Games. During the first half of the 1960s Awori studied nuclear physics and political economics at Harvard University on a scholarship. Whilst at Harvard he became the first athlete in heptagonal track history to win three events, with victory in the long jump, hurdles, and the 60 yards. When he graduated he held three outdoor and five indoor school records. Awori competed at the Olympic Games in Roma (1960) and Tokyo (1964), along with two editions of the Commonwealth Games (Australia 1962, Jamaica 1966). At the Olympics he ran in multiple sprint and hurdles events with his best result coming in the 110 metres hurdles in Roma where he reached the quarter-finals.

In the early 1970s Awori was jailed in Uganda for a brief period following Idi Amin’s coup. Upon his release he went into political exile in Kenya, teaching at the University of Nairobi. By 1979 Amin had been overthrown with Awori returning to Uganda and becoming the nation’s ambassador to the United States, and later the ambassador to Belgium. In 2001 he came third in the presidential elections in Uganda, and he represented Samia-Bugwe North in the Ugandan Parliament from 2001 to 2006. Awori was known for being an outspoken member of parliament for the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), eventually leaving the UPC in 2007 to join the National Resistance Movement, who ruled the country at the time. From 2009 to 2011 he served as the Minister for Information and Communications Technology in the Ugandan cabinet.

Personal Bests: 100y – 9.4 (1961); 200 – 21.3y (1961); 110H – 14.0y (1963).