THE LAST WORD

By Andrew M. Mwenda I am in Rwanda to attend a dialogue between journalists and government on the state of media freedom in Rwanda. The subject of press freedom in Rwanda evokes strong passions especially given that democracy in Africa has been constructed like a religion. Debate ignores critical reforms …

By Andrew M. Mwenda With the nominations for LC5 candidates done, Sunday Vision reported that the ruling NRM has candidates in all the 112 districts; FDC has candidates in only 40 districts, UPC 27 and DP 13. The combined opposition has candidates in only 80 districts. Meanwhile, there are 118 …

By Andrew M. Mwenda On October 24th, I went to Entebbe Airport to catch a South African Airways flight via Johannesburg to Namibia. Airline officials said I needed a transit visa through South Africa. I explained that I was not going to enter the country, only to change flights in …

By Andrew M. Mwenda On Wednesday last week, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) published results of its National Household Survey which showed that the proportion of people living in poverty has declined from 31 to 23%. It was good news for President Yoweri Museveni who had just been nominated …

By Andrew M.Mwenda With nominations for parliamentary candidates finished, independents (largely malcontents who lost in the NRM primaries) are now the largest political party in the contest albeit a non-organised and unconscious one. By November 30, out of the 238 directly contestable seats, independents had fielded 269 candidates (in 95 …

By Andrew Mwenda Last week, I finished reading Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars, an inside account of Obama’s approach to the war in Afghanistan. Then on Sunday night, I watched a two-hour documentary on National Geographic titled Inside Talibanistan, an interesting tale of the complexity of fighting the Taliban …

By Andrew Mwenda Last Saturday, October 16, I was a guest on Capital Radio’s Capital Gang programme and our debate settled down to the subject of democracy in Africa ‘ specifically on Uganda and Rwanda. Like most debate on anything in Africa, the discussion did not use the facts of …

By Andrew Mwenda Last weekend, we celebrated 48 years of independence. Sadly, many Ugandans (and Africans generally) do not appreciate the political significance of this event largely because of the failures of post independence governments. The resultant frustration has given vent to sections of the international community, largely from the …

By Andrew Mwenda The common message against President Paul Kagame of Rwanda is that he is a ‘media predator.’ The Ugandan ‘democracy’ crowd claim I cannot host a show like Andrew Mwenda Live in Rwanda. Yet the threat to the show would not be Kagame perceived intolerance. The show would …

By Andrew M. Mwenda An important feature of the recently concluded NRM election primaries was the violence and fraud that characterised the process across almost the entire country. This produced a large number of aggrieved NRM politicians who have declared they want to run as independents. This is intriguing because …