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Faculty
Faculty

Chambi Chachage

Assistant Professor

chambi.chachage@howard.edu
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https://www.chambi.udadisi.com

Department/Office

  • African Studies

School/College

  • College of Arts & Sciences

Biography

Chambi Chachage is an assistant professor in the Department of African Studies at Howard University where he teaches courses on ‘African Systems of Thought’ and ‘Introduction to Contemporary Africa’. He holds a PhD (African Studies)and AM (History) from Harvard University, an MSc (African Studies) from the University of Edinburgh, a BSocSci (Psychological Studies), and a BA Honors (African Studies) from the University of Cape Town (UCT). He was a graduate exchange program student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMASS-Amherst) and an International Scholar Research fellow at Stanford University.

Before joining the faculty at Howard University, he was an assistant professor at Carleton University, where he taught courses on ‘African Digital Humanities’, ‘African Socialism vis-à-vis Capitalism’, ‘The Great Lakes Region of Africa’, and ‘Introduction to African Studies’. He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at Princeton University, where he taught courses on ‘Critical African Studies’, ‘The Mother and Father Continent: A Global History of Africa’, and ‘Health, Race, and Power in Africa in the Digital Age.’ His articles have appeared on various online platforms such as Africa is a Country, Corona Times, African Arguments, Africa at LSE [London School of Economics], Pambazuka News, and CODESRIA [Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa] Bulletin. He has published in journals such as the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), Development, African Sociological Review, and Business History Review (BHR).

With Annar Cassam, the former Assistant to the first President of Tanzania, he is the editor of Africa’s Liberation: The Legacy of Nyerere. His forthcoming book entitled Africanizing Capital: Emergence of Black Entrepreneurs in Eastern Africa is expected to be published in 2025/2026. He is also the founder of www.udadisi.com, a multimedia e-platform for critical views on African issues.

Education & Expertise

Education

PhD and AM

African Studies and History
Harvard University
2018

MSc

African Studies
Edinburgh University
2005

BSocSci and BA (Honors)

Psychological Studies and African Studies
University of Cape Town
2004

Expertise

Digital Humanities; Academic Freedom; History of Capitalism and Socialism; Urban History; Business History; Entrepreneurship; Transformative Feminism; Marxism.

Academics

Academics

AFST 101 Introduction to Contemporary Africa

This course aims to introduce students to what Africa means locally and globally through an interdisciplinary lens. It interrogates popular and conventional representations of the African continent across various academic disciplines, such as geography, history, anthropology, ethnomusicology, political science, and scholarly fields, such as African Studies, Cultural Studies, and Religious Studies. By combining interactive lectures, Wikipedia assignments, class visits, and team presentations, the course seeks to equip students with critical tools for making sense of the enduring historical legacy of Africa’s global encounters and the contemporary state(s) of Africa.

AFST 111 African Systems of Thought

This course aims to introduce students to selected key African thinkers across historical time and geographical space. By historical time, it means core phases, such as precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial or early and modern times. And by geographical spaces, it means five major regions of the continent—Southern, Northern, Western, Eastern, Central—and the African Diaspora. It focuses on their thoughts on issues impacting Africa(ans) presented through various media and genres. By combining interactive lectures, Wikipedia assignments, class visits, and student presentations, the course seeks to equip students with critical tools for making sense of the enduring impact of Africa’s thinkers and systems of thought on the current state(s) of Africa(ns).

AFST 107 Social Media and the African World

This course aims to introduce students to key social, cultural, economic, and political dynamics in Africa through the lenses of social media platforms and their users. It focuses on how both the government and citizens in African countries utilize digital spaces, such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, WhatsApp, and interactive websites, to advance their agendas that have a profound impact on the wider society. Of particular interest is how social media is a tool and arena for state surveillance and political activism. By combining interactive lectures, Wikipedia assignments, class visits, hashtag campaigns, and student presentations, the course seeks to equip students with critical tools for grasping the impact(s) of social media on the state(s) of Africa(ns).

Accomplishments

Accomplishments

Harvard University’s Derek Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching

Publications and Presentations

Publications and Presentations

Journal Article: From Citizenship to Netizenship: Blogging for social change in Tanzania

"Chambi Chachage discusses the roles of Information and Communication Technologies in empowering Tanzanian Civil Society Organizations. His article is based on a longer paper that looks at the impact of blogs, sms, lister vs and other online forums and interrogates ideas associated with Information and Communication Technologies for Development. Here Chachage focuses on blogging as an important feature of ‘netizenship’ in Tanzania" - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/dev.2010.54

Book Chapter: Mwalimu Nyerere as a Global Conscience

"Abstract: As the first president of Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere was instrumental in the liberation of the continent of Africa from colonialism. But he also connected that liberation to similar struggles in the African diaspora and between the Global South and Global North. To do so, he championed the formation of a “new economic order” that could reduce the gap between and within rich and poor countries. Thus the socialist policy of ujamaa—“familyhood”—that he pursued in his home country was a building block toward the creation and consolidation of a worldwide brotherhood/sisterhood based on equality and dignity"-https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1525/9780520962514-013/html?lang=en