Chude's Bio

Tagged ‘Africa’s number one interviewer’, Chude Jideonwo is host of #WithChude, one of Africa’s most watched talk shows, and #WithChudeLive, Africa’s biggest talk concert, with over 5,000 people attending his live-interview event. He is a lawyer and media entrepreneur whose 25-year career spans advertising, public relations, television, radio, film, print and digital media.

He is also co-founder and former chief executive of industry-leading African media companies – RED | For Africa, The Future Awards Africa, YNaija.com and Joy, Inc. As CEO of RED, he crafted and led strategies that fueled social movements and shaped national elections across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Senegal. Under his leadership, RED was honored as African Business of the Year alongside Dangote Group and Chandaria Industries.

In 2016, after a decade at RED, Chude sensed a calling to a new mission. He stepped away from his role to focus on storytelling that uplifts the mind, heart, and spirit, founding Joy, Inc., as a human flourishing company that partnered with organizations like Ford Motor Company and the Lagos State Government to create safe, nurturing spaces for mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. In 2020, he launched #WithChude, a viral podcast and multi-platform talk show featuring intimate, transformative conversations with African leaders and celebrities. Syndicated on three Pan-African networks, streamed on withChude.com, with tens of millions of views on YouTube, it has become one of the continent’s largest IP libraries for stories of healing, resilience and growth.

As Adjunct Faculty, he has taught media and communication to undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Pan Atlantic University. He has also advised global corporations, governments and nonprofits including Meta, Google, Heirs Holdings, Unilever, the Gates Foundation, the African Union, and the governments of the UK and the US, on media, strategy, democracy, and human rights.

Passionate about accelerating Africa’s creator economy as the future of independent media on the continent, in 2024 he co developed the Creator Economy Incubator in Nigeria and Kenya with the Co-Creation Hub and Africa No Filter – to train, mentor and fund emerging content creators and digital storytellers – and in 2025, he announced the Fourthmainland Creator Fund to personally invest $500,000 in African creators.

Chude has been a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, CNBC Young Business Leader of the Year, an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellow, a World Fellow at Yale University and Creative-In-Residence at the London School of Economics. One year after the fellowship, the school endowed The Chude Jideonwo Prize for Creativity to commemorate Black History Month.

He has chaired and served on boards and committees that include Microsoft, Oando, the Nigerian Ministries of Finance and Youth, the British Council, the Ford Foundation, The Initiative for Equal Rights, and The Africa Center. As a filmmaker, his films have been nominated or won for ‘Best Documentary’, ‘Best Feature’ and ‘Official Selection’ at the Africa International Film Festival, the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA), the San Diego Black Film Festival, amongst others.

His writing and work have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Huffington Post, and the Financial Times, and he is the author of two books: ‘Are We the Turning Point Generation?’ and ‘How to Win Elections in Africa: Parallels with Donald Trump’. His latest book, ‘How Depression Saved My Life’ is published by Narrative Landscape.