The Observer was first published on 25 March 2004 as The Weekly Observer, founded by ten former Daily Monitor journalists led by Ogen Kevin Aliro, who died a year later. Among the other founders were James Tumusiime, who ran the paper for over a decade and left in 2020, managing director Pius Muteekani Katunzi, Hassan Badru Zziwa, and Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, who later became an opposition MP. It is published by Observer Media Limited from Kamwokya in Kampala, ran as a tri-weekly for years, and now operates as a weekly print paper with a daily digital edition. In 2007 its reporter Richard M Kavuma won the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year award, having taken a United Nations Foundation award the year before. Since 2025 the paper has been openly seeking a buyer after five years of financial strain. Today, The Observer is mainly focused on Ugandan parliament and government accountability, the courts and high-profile political trials, elections and party politics, human rights institutions, business and banking, sport, and lifestyle, from their offices in Kampala, Uganda. One interesting fact: the paper suffered break-ins in October 2016 and again in April 2017 in which equipment was stolen and the premises vandalised, incidents its own twentieth-anniversary piece lists alongside its founder's death as the defining obstacles of its first two decades.