Advocate. MCIArb. @StanfordLawSchool LLM Law, Sci & Tech class of ‘24. Husband. Father. Reader. Law Don @MakLawSchool, Convener @clet_ug. Law, Tax, Tech.
Kampala Uganda
Joined January 2013
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Oh wow! Thank you ever so much, @CEOEastAfrica very kind of you!
Spotlight on Dr. Robert Kirunda: Beyond the Vantage–Bitature Case
The recent settlement of the long-running commercial dispute between businessman Patrick Bitature’s Simba Group and South African lender Vantage Capital has brought renewed attention to one of the lawyers at the centre of the nearly seven-year legal battle: Dr. Robert Kirunda, Founding Partner of Kirunda & Co. Advocates.
The dispute, which originated from a US$10 million financing agreement signed in 2014, generated numerous court proceedings, international arbitration and complex questions about commercial law, contractual enforcement and foreign investment in Uganda. Its eventual resolution through Supreme Court-led mediation brought an end to a dispute that, according to Kirunda, involved 34 proceedings across Uganda and England and Wales.
But beyond the Vantage–Bitature case, who is Robert Kirunda?
A corporate and commercial lawyer with more than two decades of legal experience, Kirunda has built his career around investment law, corporate transactions, commercial litigation, arbitration and alternative dispute resolution (ADR).
His academic journey began at Makerere University, where he pursued a Bachelor of Laws degree between 2000 and 2004, followed by a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice at Uganda's Law Development Centre in 2005. He subsequently obtained a Master of Laws in International Trade, Investment and Business in Africa from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, before pursuing another Master of Laws in Law, Science and Technology at Stanford Law School in the United States (2023–2024). He is also a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (MCIArb).
Since establishing Kirunda & Co. Advocates in 2012, he has worked across finance, infrastructure, technology, investment and commercial dispute resolution. His career has also included lecturing at Makerere University School of Law, serving on Uganda's Fourth Industrial Revolution task force and contributing to discussions on technology regulation and innovation.
In 2023, CEO East Africa Magazine recognised Kirunda among Uganda's 75 Highly Regarded Business Lawyers.
In an earlier interview with CEO East Africa Magazine, Kirunda offered some revealing insights into his philosophy of law, professional responsibility and commercial justice.
“People should not use the courts to avoid legitimate obligations,” he observed.
On professional integrity, he was equally emphatic: “Integrity is sitting across from a client and saying, ‘You will lose — don’t file,’ even if that means losing revenue.”
He also expressed concern about the state of Uganda's judicial system: “Courts don’t just resolve disputes; they guarantee the integrity of a country. But right now, our court system is painfully slow and dangerously troubled by worse problems than sloth.”
His outlook extends beyond conventional legal practice into the future of commerce and technology.
“Law follows commerce, and to lead in law (or any sector), you must think ahead,” he told CEO East Africa Magazine.
And his ambition for his firm is distinctly continental: “Our ambition is to build what we hope will become the most powerful, forward-thinking law firm on the continent.”
#RobertKirunda #VantageCapital #PatrickBitature #UgandaLawyers #CommercialLaw #AlternativeDisputeResolution #CEOEastAfricaMagazine #EastAfricaBusinessNews
Curious: those of you who read legal scholarship: which are the top authors whose work you have found most robust, memorable and easy to understand?
In all the years I’ve known @qataharraymond I admire his depth and independence of thought, rigor on any matter, humility, consistency, and, simply, rounded grounding. Sad to have seen people tear him apart for his well considered views & Personal choices.
A profound moment as Raymond almost tears up putting his friend, the late King Oyo in context – and the difficulties of succession.
Critics forgot that him & the king were best friends, and remained loyal to the friendship. But the kingdom has to continue.
Full: youtube.com/watch?v=WW6HJjaY…
What was it that turned our society into the kind that would denigrate people in death? Why not count the birds of singers that nested in this huge baobab tree and found their song, their skill, their inspiration Moses Matovu? What was it that made us this kind of people?
Moses Matovu’s music got a torn, hurting & struggling country 2 sing along, &, evn briefly, take its thoughts off the pain of the moment. You need 2 trace his music back to the post war, HIV ridden days of the 90s, & see how it brightened dark days. May his songs remain Timeless!
Discoveries like this must trigger both hope and caution. @mustafasuleyman’s The Coming Wave makes this point in perhaps the clearest way possible. We must celebrate the promise while awakening to the caution of twinning AI with synthetic biology.
Today we announced the Claude-led discovery of a molecular machine that we suspect could represent a new gene editing mechanism. Its precise function, biotechnological utility (if any), or level of significance is not yet clear, but at minimum it is work I would have been proud to do as a PhD student. The work was done mostly, though not entirely, by Claude: our life sciences team suggested a broad area of research, Claude read through the literature and a bunch of genome data and discovered something interesting, then Claude proposed experiments to verify the discovery and our team carried them out.
It’s easy to dismiss this as a one-off or curiosity, but we’ve repeatedly seen a pattern where AI performance in new intellectual domains goes from weak to superhuman in a matter of a few years. In 2023 models struggled to do math at the level of an average high-school student. In 2024 they started to do well on math competitions for the best high-schoolers in the country, in 2025 they started to solve minor open problems, in early 2026 more significant open problems, and in late 2026 they are beginning to solve the top few open problems in all of mathematics. We believe AI for biology is on a similar exponential trend.
The main difference between biology and mathematics, of course, is that math can be done purely theoretically, while biology requires experimentation. Some have used this to draw the conclusion that AI’s utility in biology will be limited. We think this is wrong. As we’ve demonstrated today, humans can collaborate with AI to perform the experiments, validate key results in a few weeks and, if necessary, work with the AI to iterate on what they find. Eventually it may even be possible for Claude itself to safely perform the experiments by autonomously controlling lab equipment, with appropriate safeguards in place, but we aren’t doing that today (our lab is also a BSL1/BSL2 facility that doesn't handle materials dangerous to humans).
More broadly, biomedical advancement has many stages — from fundamental biology discoveries, to translational research, to drug discovery, clinical trials, and finally the actual delivery of medicines and health care to patients. We are also interested in these later stages, but even simply accelerating the first stage of fundamental biological discoveries has the potential to speed up and broaden the entire pipeline. Improving our understanding of biology and sharpening biologists’ tools can drive forward all of the later stages, for example by identifying new drug targets, finding new therapeutic modalities, allowing for more precise measurement, and speeding up the experimental loop which itself further accelerates our understanding of biology. This will not in itself speed up clinical trial times, but if it succeeds it could greatly increase the number of promising candidates that go into the pipeline — an increase in throughput even though latency remains.
In Machines of Loving Grace, I wrote about AI’s potential to “cure most diseases in 5-10 years” — a goal that sounds impossible, but one I believe is just barely possible if AI is applied to every stage of the pipeline. The first step is showing that AI can first help with, and then drive, biological discoveries.
Claude’s discovery is the latest in a line of related prior work that goes back decades, beginning with systems like CRISPR, and continuing with discoveries like the bridge recombinase and VIPR in the past few years. Recently, there has been heightened interest in systems based on reverse transcriptase (RT) enzymes, the enzyme underlying the system Claude identified. And most recently, a Stanford team working independently described a novel RT system with an associated non-coding array that is in some ways similar to the one Claude found, though they are distinct systems that evolved independently from each other. I believe that we’re at the very beginning of finding such systems and developing them into powerful tools for biotechnology.
I’m proud of the resources Anthropic has invested in accelerating the public benefits of AI through the life sciences, and we’re aiming both to grow our life sciences team and to work with other scientists to extend this approach to a broad range of problems. If you have a proposal for a research collaboration or are interested in joining our life sciences team, please reach out.
1 last lesson from King Oyo’s passing. The best farewell you can give to those you leave behind is to sort out what happens on your passing. It affects everyone around you, profoundly. No matter how large or small your estate is, call your lawyer. Make an estate plan. Happy week!
The events after King Oyo’s passing teach us all vital lessons about power, impact, legacy, faith, family, human relationships, even basic decency. How could one man teach so much without having used so many words? May the gentle King rest in peace!
When you put it this way….. 🤔
Been taking all sorts of calls from journos asking me to comment on what’s happened in Toro since King Oyo died.
I’ve repeatedly said I don’t feel qualified to.
That I’m watching and learning.
That things are fluid.
Discombobulating even.
And no the goalkeeper story is very last week.
Almost forgotten..
Oh yes. We moved on to a journalist who’s known by two names in two different countries..
Who’s married to someone who’s not from a clan in Toro.
Andrew said it’s a requirement.
Oh yes. There’s a Will. But an older Will by the grandfather of the King who just passed away is being quoted…
And King Oyo’s cousins - whose father is married to King Oyo’s mother’s younger sister have openly disagreed with their father who by the way is Oyo’s uncle..
And like their Aunt- Oyo’s mum- The Queen Mother- who’s their mother’s sister- they say King Oyo had a son who’s mother Andrew and others want to know..
Jackson or Jacob. Others are quoting Shakespeare’s what’s in a name.
No DNA. The King isn’t supposed cut.
And the late King Oyo’s sister and his aunt- his father’s sister- and others have gone to court because their relative - a cousin- has been named king yet King Oyo has a son. So King Oyo’s will must be done.
Raymond says it’s all good.
This kavuyo isn’t unusual.
Also, the polarisation is so wide and confusing that I don’t know where to turn.
Sigh.
May King Oyo find rest and eternal peace.
Sitting on that throne seems to have been an extreme sport.
Not easy at all.
These things will self correct.
Or
I’ll wait for Mzee to speak.
He’s seen it all- like he told me in a 2013 interview.
In the meantime, we are set to cover the King final journey.
God Bless Toro. God Bless Uganda.
This is such a succinct way to put it, @kasujja
He Googled instead of using Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
Ran a grammar, spellcheck and looked for synonyms on Word…
Instead of using Roget’s Thesaurus or Oxford English Dictionary.
He used a laptop instead of a typewriter..
TP instead of leaves.
The same reason you don’t drive manual cars anymore.
For someone who’s as tech savvy as you are, my beloved Andrew, I find your characterisation of this gentleman odd.
Especially because you are a lifelong advocate of efficiency.
King Oyo’s death brings this poem to mind:
And soonest our best men with thee do go, … Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men….
May the departed King rest in peace.
The Queen mother of Tooro. No mother should ever have to bury their child. But burying two kings, one a spouse the other a son you raised, & have to bury him before his prime, shortly after burying a daughter? That pain’s unimaginable. May God comfort her bleeding heart!
This.
Being a registrar at @URSBHQ is an important role BUT it doesn’t make you an English teacher or a dictator. You don’t rejects people’s applications based on your personal feelings.
“This name is not an English word” - yes, I know.. I picked it
“You used British English, use American English” - question is do you understand what the document says, is it enforceable?
This attitude of fix it or it won’t get approved is BS. Registrars need to listen and learn, and be advisable. #URSBDoBetter
This is quite an interesting way to look at it!
"Sam Altman the other week was saying in like six months AI will be like a genie that you can ask wishes for... that motherfucker has never even seen Aladdin, what's he talking about?"
- AI whistleblower @edzitron gives his thoughts on whether he thinks AI has become more capable than ever before.
Heartiest congratulations. @Bazira__ well deserved!
I am deeply honored to have been appointed Head of Litigation at the firm. Grateful to the partners and the entire BK team for the trust and confidence placed in me. In a special way, I wish to appreciate Ebert Byenkya, Oscar John Kihika (now Justice of Appeal) and Blaisie Paulsen for their mentorship over the years.
I look forward to guiding the team and thank you to our clients, for the continued support.
Please do join us if you can!
There is hardly an honor higher in one’s professional life than the honor of earning the respect of one’s peers! I had a fantastic time at @SM_Co_Advocates this afternoon. We swapped endless stories! What a fantastic team!
A few weeks ago, a clip in which I addressed marriage and feminism trended here and elsewhere. I regret the language I used and have attempted to correct the error in this article. I offer my contrition to those I offended. I hope the wider debate will continue.
There is so much profound wisdom in this tweet. @qataharraymond
Classic @nickopiyo there is real power in that last sentence, my brother. Real power.
While still working at @chapterfourug, I handled countless cases against the former Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, now the Directorate of Intelligence Security - my approach in dealing with them was different from that of many human rights lawyers. I explored administrative remedies and resorted to legal remedies only after I failed to resolve an issue. I knew a court-led remedy was a long, uncertain, and often heavily influenced route.
This approach meant I had numerous face-to-face interactions with the institution's leadership. There was no love lost in these interactions. They all called to my face an agent of foreigners & unpatriotic. I was unbothered and pursued accountability against their officers.
The last interaction was a case of a torture victim - tortured by Capt. Amis Ainebyonna at the behest of @AnitahAmong, the Speaker of Parliament then, & her husband @MosesMagogo. It also involved @CharlesTwiine, who then worked at @Parliament_Ug in some police investigative role.
I took the matter up with Brig. Rugumyo, the Deputy Commandant of CMI at the time. A series of engagements yielded worthless undertakings, and I escalated the issue to his boss, Maj. Gen. Birungi, & at some point involving @AndrewMwenda, a close friend of Birungi.
The matter was never resolved - at least in the manner I had envisioned. Let's say the client found a remedy, albeit a half remedy, and was content with what he finally got.
Throughout the process, the CMI officers derisively referred to their boss and ‘the cook’. I understand he was a chef in the army at some point. I had my suspicions about him, but I never knew that he took to cooking false terror alarms.
The once powerful Capt. Amis is in prolonged military detention ( I hope he gets a fair trial); the folks who unleashed him to do unspeakable things to fellow citizens may well end up in jail for corruption (I hope for torture and murder as well); the folks who looked away and allowed him to use CMI facilities are in jail, and the others are under house arrest.
Power is transient. Use it well so that when your tour of duty is over, you will not live
in regret or have a tumultuous ending.