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. Background and education 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 Lieutenant General Kayanja Muhanga, a senior UPDF military officer. After attending primary school locally, Mwenda entered Nyakasura School where he completed his O-Level studies. He was then admitted to Busoga College Mwiri in the Eastern Region of Uganda for his A-Level education. He graduated with a High School Diploma from Mwiri. He was admitted to Makerere University, Uganda's oldest and largest public university, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. 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 Science 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. Mwenda was a John Knight Fellow at Stanford University 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 2008, the World Economic Forum selected Mwenda as a Young Global Leader (https://blog.ted.com/mwenda_shikwati/) and in 2010, Foreign Policy Magazine named him among the 100 Top Global Thinkers (https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/11/23/the-fp-top-100-global-thinkers-5/). In 2011, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda nominated Mwenda to serve on his Presidential Advisory Council (https://nilepost.co.ug/2019/09/23/kagame-drops-mwenda-as-advisor/). In 2012 and 2013, Mwenda was named by Foreign Policy among the global top 100 most influential persons on Twitter (https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/13/the-fp-twitterati-100/). In 2013, he cofounded a social enterprise, Tugende, with Michael Wilkerson and Matt Brown, a company dedicated to helping young people own assets from which they derive their livelihoods. Tugende has since been one of the fastest growing companies and now boasts of over 25,000 customers who are owners of such assets and another 30,000 who are in the process of securing ownership through micro finance loans.(https://digestafrica.com/andrew-mwenada-tugende-opic)