Born in 1993 in Uganda, Ivan Okuda is a Ugandan writer and one of the most prolific young journalists in Uganda and the region. He completed his Bachelor of Laws (LLB) studies at Uganda’s Makerere University in 2017 and a Post Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice at the Law Development Centre in 2019 while undertaking a Ford Foundation funded one year fellowship with the Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies (GLISS). He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts (Journalism and Media Studies) with specialisation in Media Law and Ethics and Investigative Journalism from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa on a Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) Media Africa Scholarship, having been one of two journalists selected from Sub Saharan Africa for the coveted scholarship.

Okuda started writing for national newspapers as a teenager in his Ordinary Level (“O” Level) school days, first with the New Vision as a Teens Reporter before crossing to Nation Media Group’s Daily Monitor newspaper which he joined in 2010, then as a senior four student writing for the Sunday Monitor’s High School magazine T-Vibe. Before taking off a year for study in South Africa, Ivan was a Special Projects and Investigations Writer with Daily Monitor, 93.3 KFM radio morning show analyst on current affairs and also a contributor to the East African newspaper. He was awarded the Writer of the year award (secondary schools short story category) in 2010 and 2009 by National Book Trust of Uganda (NABOTU) and sits on the technical advisory team of Babishai Niwe Poetry Foundation.

Mr. Okuda has authored over 900 mass media articles and interviews with high ranking personalities from 2009 to date, a good many of them accessible online (www.monitor.co.ug/Ivan Okuda).

Okuda has demonstrable passion and interest in human rights, democracy, good governance, rule of law and has used his space in the media to explore human rights violations in Uganda and East Africa. He has also featured on Aljazeera’s flagship Africa Investigates series in a 2014 documentary exposing graft in Uganda’s court system. In 2015 he joined celebrated African journalist Sorious Samura (from Sierra Leone) and Producer Clive Patterson of the UK based Insight TWI to investigate the assassination of Uganda’s muslim clerics in a documentary (Uganda: Living in fear) that featured on Aljazeera’s Africa Investigates program.

Ivan is also Managing Partner and Founder, of Panorama Press Ltd, a consulting firm in Kampala which has undertaken research and analysis for national and international organisations, to wit: the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa (OSIEA), Westminster Foundation for Democracy, Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies, Anti Corruption Coalition Uganda, Transparency International, Africa Institute for Energy Governance, among other regional and international clients. He is also a co-director and co-founder at Ukarimu Properties Ltd, a real estate company established in Uganda with low cost and middle income housing as its niche market in Uganda and South Africa, investments in stock markets and interests in commercial tree planting projects.