Andrew Mwenda

On 3 February 2019, Mwenda launched the Uganda National Peoples' Democratic Revolutionary Front (UNPDRF) in the bushes of Kanyandahi in western Uganda with six men and five sticks. He declared himself supreme shogun of the UNPDRF and Charles Onyango Obbo its chief ideologue. On social media, he declared that the cause of the UNPDRF was "battle Museveni's corrupt dictatorship, Besigye's radical extremism and Bobi Wine's empty-headed demagoguery."

In 2014, Mwenda was among the petitioners for annulling The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014.

Later, he won a Chevening Scholarship and was admitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, where he graduated with a Master of Arts in Development Studies. He was a visiting fellow at Yale University, in 2010. He also studied as a fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, in 2009. He was a John Knight Fellow at Stanford University, in the United States between 2006 and 2007. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 2005, and a visiting fellow at the Africa Study Centre of the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, in 2003.

In April 2008, he was arrested and released on bail by the Ugandan government for "being in possession of seditious material and of publishing inflammatory articles".

Mwenda won the CPJ International Press Freedom Awards in 2008 sponsored by the Committee to Protect Journalists, "in tribute to his commitment to a free press in Uganda and the whole world".

Mwenda worked as a political editor of the Daily Monitor and general manager of its affiliate on FM radio, KFM, before establishing The Independent in 2007. He has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the World Resources Institute, and Transparency International. He has also written for international news media like Der Spiegel, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy. He also has produced documentaries for BBC World television and radio.

He has criticised aid agencies and charities for what he says is their ineffectiveness and collusion with corruption. He believes that western aid has been largely unhelpful for African development, since it encourages dependency, sustains wars and fuels corrupt states. He argues that aid goes to the least deserving states, those that have failed their people, rather than those that have reformed. In June 2007, he gave a speech about these issues at the TED conference in Arusha, Tanzania.

In July 2006, Mwenda appeared before the British House of Commons committee on Global Poverty to testify against aid to Africa. He has written widely on the effects of aid on the development process in Africa and been published in such prestigious newspapers as the International Herald Tribune and Der Spiegel and done radio and television documentaries for the BBC on this subject. Mr. Mwenda has also been widely quoted in international media, including the BBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times, The Economist, and many other newspapers, radio and television networks in Europe and North America.

In 2005, he was among sixteen senior journalists invited by the British government to discuss with Prime Minister Tony Blair the forthcoming report of the Commission for Africa.

In August 2005, he was charged with sedition for broadcasting a discussion of the cause of death of Sudanese vice-president John Garang. Garang was killed when the Ugandan presidential helicopter smashed in a storm over a rebel area, on the way back from talks in Uganda. During his radio programme, the journalist accused the Ugandan government of "incompetence" and said they had put Garang on "a junk helicopter ... at night ... in poor weather ... over an insecure area".

Andrew Mwenda (born 1972) is a Ugandan print, radio and television journalist, and the founder and owner of The Independent, a current affairs newsmagazine. He was previously the political editor of The Daily Monitor, a Ugandan daily newspaper, and was the presenter of Andrew Mwenda Live on KFM Radio in Kampala, Uganda's capital city.

Mwenda was born in 1972 in Fort Portal, Kabarole District, in the Western Region of Uganda. His father is Mzee Phillip Muhanga of Fort Portal. Mwenda is a younger brother to Brigadier Kayanja Muhanga, a senior UPDF military officer.