Stephen Ouma Bwire

Stephen Ouma Bwire is a Ugandan Special Correspondent in Kampala for the Nation Media Group Limited. He contributes to the company’s outlets that include The Daily Nation, Sunday Nation, Taifa Leo and the Weekly The EastAfrican newspapers.

Ouma also contributes to the Easy FM (Nation radio) and NTV Television. He has been an all — round journalist for 15 years covering Political, Business and Sports issues, locally and internationally but undertaking mostly investigative stories. Earlier he worked for the Telecast, The New Argus, The Focus and the New Mirror newspapers (1987 - 1992).

Since 1995 he has been Kampala Stringer for Reuters News Agency covering human — interest stories, features/profiles on political figures, business firms and sports personalities. Ouma is General Secretary Uganda Journalists Union (UJU) and Representative/Contact person for the Brussels based International Federation of Journalists.

He is Secretary Eastern Africa Journalists Associations (EAJA), a Federation that covers Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan, Seychelles and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

He is also Executive Committee member of the Cairo based Union of African Journalists (UAJ), Sports Intelligence Unit (Denmark), Patron Uganda Freelance Journalists Association (FREEPEN), Editor Uganda Media Development Foundation and member — Uganda Sports Press Association (|USPA).

As Uganda Journalists Union Chief Executive, he coordinates all training programmes undertaken by the union locally especially those organized and funded through the International Federation of Journalists.

He has been coordinator/Resource person/Trainer for journalists on Collective Bargaining, Professional Code of Ethics, Media Laws, Journalists Rights and Safety and Plight of Freelance Journalists among others.

Ouma trained as a Journalist at various institutions including American University in Cairo (AUC) and the Institute of Public Administration (IPA) in Kampala. He has also pursued short Journalism courses in Minnesota (2005), Athens, Greece (2004), Copenhagen, Denmark (2000 and 2002), Bilbao, Spain (1997), Cairo, Egypt (1998), Kenya and Tanzania.