Chude's Bio

Chude Jideonwo is Founder & Chairman of HBC Holdings (parent brand of media groups RED | For Africa and FourthMainland) and host of the viral talk show and podcast, #WithChude.

He is a lawyer, journalist and media entrepreneur whose 26-year career spans advertising, public relations, television, radio, film, print and digital media.

Tagged ‘Africa’s number one interviewer’, his show #WithChude is one of Africa’s most watched talk shows - hosting interviews, investigations and documentaries that narrate the emotional truth of our lives as Nigerians and Africans, while #WithChudeLive is Africa’s biggest talk concert, with over 5,000 people attending his live-interview event.

On the back-end, he is chair of HBC, a proprietary holding brand which invests or owns controlling stakes in industry-leading media companies and brands - with a current portfolio of 13 companies and brands across public relations, political communication, digital media, television and the creator economy. It is Africa’s largest media conglomerate housing content and communication companies.

He transitioned into this role after 10 years as co-founder and chief executive officer of one of Africa’s biggest communication groups, RED | For Africa and 8 years as CEO of pioneering mental health and human flourishing company, Joy, Inc. - working across 23 African countries.

As CEO of RED, he built era-defining culture brands that include The Future Awards Africa and YNaija.com; and through portfolio companies Red Media Africa and StateCraft Inc., he 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.

His work with Joy, Inc. evolved into #WithChude, which has become one of the continent’s largest IP libraries for stories of healing and transformation - syndicated on four Pan-African TV networks, streamed on withChude.com, with tens of millions of views on YouTube.

Passionate about accelerating Africa’s creator economy as the future of independent media on the continent, 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 he launched the FourthMainland Creator Fund to invest in African creators.

As a university lecturer, 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, the Gates Foundation, the African Union, and the governments of the UK and the US, on media, strategy, democracy and human rights.

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.

He is the author of four books including ‘His Father’s Knickers’ published when he was 15, ‘Are We the Turning Point Generation?’, ‘How to Win Elections in Africa: Parallels with Donald Trump’, and his bestselling memoir ‘How Depression Saved My Life’.

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 his films have been nominated or won for ‘Best Feature’, ‘Best Documentary’ and ‘Official Selection’ at the Africa International Film Festival, the San Diego Black Film Festival, and the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA).

Chude’s thesis is simple: stories can do everything. Stories are more powerful than technology, business, or politics; because stories are what shape reality itself. He has built a media conglomerate that proves that thesis across three decades - shaping how Africa sees, hears and understands itself.