Andrew Mwenda

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Andrew Mwenda

Andrew Mwenda is a Ugandan journalist. He attended Busoga College, Mwiri in eastern Uganda before attending Makerere University. He earned a master's degree in the UK. He is now a Research Fellow with Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) and former political editor of The Monitor Newspaper (Uganda) and a former presenter of Andrew Mwenda Live on the KFM radio station. In 2005, he was among sixteen senior journalists invited by the British government to meet prime minister Tony Blair to discuss 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 crashed 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". [1] He also criticized President Yoweri Museveni, calling him a failure, a coward and a "villager", and said the president's days were numbered if he "goes on a collision course with me". [2]

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 Des Spigiel and done radio and television documentaries for the BBC on this subject. Mr. Mwenda has also been widely quoted in international media - BBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, The Times of London, The Economist, and many other newspapers, radio and television networks in Europe and North America.

He has assidiously criticised many activities of multinational corporations in Africa, and also criticises aid agencies and charities for what he says is their self-interest and collusion with corruption. He believes that western aid been largely been unhelpful for African development, since it fuels corrupt states and sustains wars. He argues that aid goes to the least deserving states, those that have failed their people, rather than those that have reformed.

Mr Mwenda has said that he would like to be President of Uganda, although he has not yet joined or formed a political party. As of August 2006 he is due to join Stanford University as a research fellow for one year. Mr. Mwenda is currently a John Knight fellow at Stanford University in the United States.