Amandina Lihamba

Tanzanian actress and writer

Amandina Lihamba
Born	1944 (age 79–80) Morogoro District, Tanzania
Nationality	Tanzanian
Citizenship	Tanzania
Alma mater	University of Leeds
Occupation(s)	Actress Director Professor
Notable work	Maangamizi: The Ancient One

Amandina Lihamba (born 1944) is a Tanzanian academic, actress, playwright and theatre director. She is a professor at the University of Dar es Salaam in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts and has served as its dean, head of department, and university council member. In 1989, she co-founded the national Children Theatre Project and festival. She also founded the girls drama group Tuseme (Let's Speak Out) festival with Penina Muhando in 1998.^[1]

Lihambra was born in Morogoro District, Tanzania in 1944.^[2] She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Leeds. Her 1985 doctoral dissertation focussed on "Politics and Theatre in Tanzania after the Arusha Declaration 1967–1984".^[3] There, she describes how after the Arusha Declaration the Tanzanian verse drama ngonjera evolved from a propaganda tool of the ruling party into a subversive and syncretic form.^[4]

Apart from plays and children's books, Lihamba also wrote Hawala ya fedha, based on Senegalese film director Ousmane Sembène's The Money-Order.^[5]

Selected works

Plays

Harakati za ukombozi (2003)
Hawala ya fedha (2004)

Fiction for young readers

Mkutano wa pili wa ndege (1992)
Nana, Upepo mwanana (1999)

Filmography as actress or writer

The Marriage of Mariamu (1985)
Khalfan and Zanzibar (1999)
Maangamizi: The Ancient One (2001)

References

^ Koch, Jule (2008). Karibuni Wananchi: Theatre for Development in Tanzania : Variations and Tendencies. Eckersdorf [Germany]: Thielmann & Breitinger. p. 107. ISBN 978-3-939661-06-1.
^ Akyeampong, Emmanuel K.; Gates, Henry Louis Jr., eds. (2012). "Lihamba, Amandina (1944– )". Dictionary of African Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-538207-5.
^ Plastow, Jane (1996). African Theatre and Politics: The Evolution of Theatre in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe: A Comparative Study. Amsterdam: Rodopi. p. 3. ISBN 978-90-420-0038-4.
^ Justice-Malloy, Rhona, ed. (2010). Theatre History Studies 2010 (2nd ed.). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. pp. 35, 40. ISBN 978-0-8173-7107-4.
^ Mwangi, E. (2009). "Amandina Lihamba's gendered adaptation of Sembene Ousmane's The Money-Order". Research in African Literatures. 40 (3): 149–173. doi:10.2979/ral.2009.40.3.149. S2CID 143142294.