About Andrew Mwenda
Andrew M. Mwenda is the founding Managing Editor of The Independent, Uganda’s premier current affairs news magazine and one of the major mainstream news organisations in East Africa Today.
As former Political editor of the Daily Monitor newspaper Uganda and host of Andrew Mwenda Live, the most popular prime time radio talk-show in Uganda. Mwenda, has an internationally recognised voice on both Media and African development,especially because of his criticism of international development assistance(Foreign Aid). He believes in political and economic liberalism although he admits that a strong and effective regulatory framework is good for free markets to work well.
He has won many awards such as the International Press Freedom Award from the International Committee to Protect Journalists “in tribute to his commitment to a free press in Uganda and the whole world, The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland selected him as a “Young Global Leader, these among others in recognition of his contribution to both print and broadcast media. He has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, World Resources Institute and Transparency International. He has also written for international news media like Des Spiegel and the International Herald Tribune. Has produced documentaries for BBC television and radio, and has regularly featured in interviews on CNN, BBC, Channel 4, SABC Africa, Sky, New York Times, Financial Times, The Times of London, The Economist and the Washington Post.
Mwenda has also authored and co-authored articles for international academic journals like Africa Affairs, Journal of Modern African Studies, Review of African Political Economy, Entwicklungspolitik (International Politics) and Journal of Democracy. He has finished co-authoring a book on Elite Politics and Corruption in Uganda and is currently writing a book on the unintended harmful consequences of foreign aid to Africa.
He was a John Knight Fellow at Stanford University till July 2007. He did a Master of Science in Development Studies from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a bachelor’s degree in journalism at Makerere University. He has taught at Makerere University, been a visiting fellow at the Africa Study Centre of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and a guest lecturer at the University of Florida at Gainesville. In November 2009, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 Global Thinkers. He is currently a post graduate fellow in African studies at Yale University.