Sam Mchombo

Dr. Sam Mchombo - Founder & President - Email

 

See Sam’s Video Interview on SAM Inc & related projects: HERE.

 

Sam Mchombo is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was born at Malindi in Mangochi district in the east African nation of Malawi. He got his primary school education in Nkhotakota (at Chombo and at Mbandira schools), and his high school education at Dedza Secondary School. He received his B.A degree from the University of Malawi (1970), Academic Post-graduate Diploma in General Linguistics (1972) and, later, Ph.D. in Linguistics (1978) from the University of London.

 

He held an appointment as a Senior Lecturer in Chichewa and Linguistics at the University of Malawi, where he pioneered the then Dept. of Chichewa & Linguistics, now renamed Dept. of African Languages and Linguistics. In spring of 1984 he traveled to the United States of America under the auspices of the Fulbright Foundation as a Visiting Scholar at the Dept. of Linguistics & Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Dept. of Linguistics at Stanford University. During the fall semester of 1984 he was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, sponsored by the Systems Development Foundation.  In the spring of 1985, Sam Mchombo was appointed Lecturer in Linguistics at San José State University.  He joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley in the summer of 1988.

 

Sam Mchombo’s research has centered on morphological and syntactic structure of Bantu languages of Africa, and the contribution of African languages to linguistic theory. He has published extensively in professional journals, and contributed chapters to books and encyclopedias. He was guest editor of the journal Linguistic Analysis: Special Issue in African Linguistics Volume 29, Number 1-2, 1999; he edited the book Theoretical Aspects of Bantu Grammar, published by the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University (1993), and is the author of the book The Syntax of Chichewa published by Cambridge University Press (2004).  He has delivered invited presentations on linguistics at international conferences in the United States, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, Swaziland, and has run courses on Bantu linguistic structure at The University of Hong Kong; The University of Limpopo (formerly University of the North), Vista University –Soweto Campus, The University of Cape Town, The University of South Africa, The University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies), and at the University of Sonora in Mexico.

 

Sam Mchombo has also published papers on political issues in southern Africa. His articles include:

‘The Democratic Transition in Malawi’ in Gros, Jean-Germain (ed.): Democratization in Late Twentieth-Century Africa. Coping with Uncertainty. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1998) pp. 21-40.

‘The Role of the Media in Fostering Democracy in Southern Africa.’ The Journal of African Policy Studies Volume 3 Number 2 & 3. 1997. Pp1-22

‘National Identity, Democracy, and the Politics of Language in Malawi and Tanzania.’ The Journal of African Policy Studies Volume 4 Number 1. 1998. Pp33-46.  ‘Religion and Politics in Malawi.’ Issues in Political Discourse Analysis. Volume 1 Number 2, 2005.

 

He has contributed commentaries to ZNet (see below), the internet version of the Z Magazine, on such topics as gender issues, corruption, media, crisis of democracy, impact of AIDS on economic development in Malawi, etc. He has delivered presentations on these issues at Iowa State University, Stanford University, Virginia Tech, and at Cornell University.

 

Since 1997 he has been involved with the youth in Malawi. Through sports he has engaged the youth to focus on, and contribute to, national development through involvement in community service. He has constantly secured sports equipment, primarily soccer balls, jerseys, etc., through donations from well-wishers in the USA as well as purchases of uniforms from Mexico and Hong Kong, and donated them to the youth in Malawi as incentive for them to get involved in development projects. He started off with the establishment of a village soccer league Mtaya Football League, in 2000, in Nkhotakota. This was followed by the formation of a youth soccer team in 2002 called SM Galaxy, based in Ndirande near the city of Blantyre. Later, in 2004, he organized a team in Area 49 near the city of Lilongwe, called Chalunda Earthquakes. Besides community service, Sam Mchombo has used sports as a forum for heightening awareness about HIV/AIDS among the youth. His work on youth and sports has received international exposure through the publication of his article ‘Sports and Development in Malawi,’ published in the journal Soccer & Society Vol. 7, Nos. 2-3, April-July 2006, pp 318-338. In May 2006 he was an invited participant in a conference on Nationalism, Globalization, and African Soccer, hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His presentation was on the role of soccer in identity formation.

 

Sam Mchombo is a soccer referee for youth games in the San Francisco Bay area, and is a faculty athletic fellow for women’s soccer at the University of California, Berkeley.

 

In spring 2003 Sam Mchombo held appointment as Distinguished African Scholar for the Institute for African Development at Cornell University, the first appointee in the then newly-established Distinguished African Scholar program.

 

 

¨ Sam Mchombo, Sports and Development in Malawi. (PDF)  Soccer & Society Vol 7, No2-3, April-July 2006, pp 318-338.

 

¨ Michael J. Agovino, “Losses, and the Losing Losers Who Hate Them,” New York Times, June 18, 2006.

 

¨ Chichewa Home Page. Language Resource. UCLA.

 

¨ Sam Mchombo, “Impact of AIDS on Economic Development in Malawi,” Z-Net. April 2000.

 

¨ Sam Mchombo, “Rounding up Hokers in Malawi,” Z-Net. Oct. 2000.

 

¨ Sam Mchombo, “Free Enterprise, Privatization, Corruption, All That,” Z-Net. Nov. 2000.

 

¨ Sam Mchombo, “The Media in Emergent Democracies in Southern Africa,” Z-Net, Jan 1997.