The offer was made to Museveni by Leicestery's Mayor Manjula Sood at the end of a private visit to the city he made on his way back from a three-day state trip to Iceland.

 

The Mayor’s father trained as a doctor at Makerere University in Kampala in the late 1960s before becoming one of the thousands of Ugandans who fled the country during the regin of Idi Amin.

 

Many of them moved to Leicester, who Sood hailed now as being a vital part of the city's economy.

 

Steve White, the head of the Leicester Sports Alliance, told Museveni that Leicester has been sending football kits and sports items to Uganda and that Leicester City, who play in Coca-Cola League One, planned to start an academy in the East African country.

 

Sood proposed that Uganda's top athletes and swimmers base themselves in Leicester during the build-up to 2012 in a new deal due to start next year.

 

Museveni, who was presented with a football during his visit, has invited Sood to Kampala at the end of the year for further discussions about the offer.

 

Uganda has competed at every Olympics since 1956, except at Montreal in 1976 when it joined the African boycott, winning one medal gold thanks to John Akii-Bua, who triumphed in the 400 metres hurdles at Munich in 1972.

 

It sent 12 competitors in five different sports to Beijing with Moses Kipsiro narrowly missing a medal in the 5,000m, coming fourth.