Ugandans

Ugandans in Qatar are migrant workers who came mostly from the 2010s, as security guards, drivers, hotel and cleaning staff and, increasingly since a 2024 labour agreement, as live-in housemaids, most of them young women. They come from many of Uganda's peoples, but in Doha they meet as Ugandans: the Ugandan Community in Qatar, founded in 2015, holds Independence Day celebrations each October, and a football side, Cranes Doha, and the Twegate dance group keep up the music, dances and food of home. Their embassy, open since about 2019, now holds diaspora conventions and national ID drives, and over four thousand Ugandans came to register in a fortnight in August 2025. Most are Christians, Catholic, Anglican and Pentecostal, who worship on Fridays in the churches of Doha's religious complex, while a Muslim minority prays in the city's mosques.

Ugandans are one of the largest African communities in Saudi Arabia, about 130,000 people, and almost all of them are women working as live-in housemaids, a migration that grew from a few thousand in 2017 to more than 80,000 departures a year by 2021-2022. Nine in ten Ugandans recruited for jobs in the Middle East go to the kingdom, and their remittances are a major source of income for families back home. They speak Luganda, English and Swahili among themselves and rarely see one another, since most live inside their employers' homes; Uganda's embassy keeps shelters in Riyadh and Jeddah for women who flee abuse. In December 2025 Ugandan dancers performed the Kadodi of Bugisu at Riyadh's Global Harmony festival, the community's first public cultural showcase in the kingdom.

Ugandans are one of the largest African communities in the United Arab Emirates, some 100,000 to 160,000 people, most of them young adults who came after 2010 to work as security guards, housemaids, cleaners, hotel, mall and restaurant staff. Women outnumber men among those recruited, and many live in their employers' villas, while men share flats in Deira, Al Qusais, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi's Mussaffah. Drawn from Uganda's many peoples, they speak English and Luganda among themselves and organise as Ugandans through an association with committees in all seven emirates and a diaspora savings cooperative. Most are Catholic, Anglican or Pentecostal Christians who worship on Fridays in the churches of Dubai and Sharjah and in African-led fellowships that close their services with Luganda songs, while a sizeable Muslim minority grows as some domestic workers embrace Islam in Emirati homes.