Dr Samwel Shanga Mhajida

Name
Samwel Shanga Mhajida

Academic Rank
Senior Lecturer

Department
History, Political Science and Development Studies

Biography

Biography

Dr. Samwel Mhajida is a senior lecturer from the Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE). He is the author of The Collapse of a Pastoral Economy: The Datoga of Central and Northern Tanzania, 1830s-2000s (Goettingen University Press, 2019), and author of two chapters in edited volumes in: Christian Zionism in Africa (2021) andUniversities and the Sustainable Development Goals: Critical Case Studies and Contexts to Advance Agenda 2030 (March 2025) and several journal articles on ethnic history, and gendered studies. Apart from this, Dr Mhajida is the deputy Secretary of the Historical Association of Tanzania (HAT) and associate editor-in-chief of Tanzania Zamani: a journal of African Historical Studies in the Department of History at the University of Dar es Salaam. He is also the current Head of the Internationalisation and Convocation Unit at DUCE.

Contacts

Email:

Email Address
samwel.mhajida@duce.ac.tz

Mob:

Research Interest

Research Interest
Gender history, youth politics and modern history of Tanzania

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Projects

Projects
  1. 2018 – 2021 Nives Kinunda, Angelus Mnenuka and Samwel Mhajida: Researchers on Women labour in agriculture in Southern Tanzania, a curse or productive labour? (CODESRIA 2018 -2021)  (28,000 USD).
  2. From 2020  to 2021: Samwel Mhajida (Principal Investigator), other members include Dr. Iddy Ramadhan Magoti, Ms Yovita Vakolavene, Dr. Victoria Makulilo: won a University of Dar es Salaam Competitive grant named  State and local responses to health related pandemics in Tanzania, 1890s – 2020 (6,000 USD).

Publications

Publications
  1. Priya Lal and Samwel Mhajida, “Remembering and Reviving Student Activism in Tanzania” Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine by Karim Hirji (ed.) Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 2010, 231, pp. 9 – 10.
  2. Samwel Mhajida “The Contempt of Private Property: The Datooga Salt Fracas and the Resistance against Colonial Definition of Property in Central Tanzania, 1923-1927” in: Ethnologia Actualis, vol. 19, No. 1/2019, pp. 36-53.

3. Samwel Mhajida “historicizing Zionism from Gospel Songs in East Africa, Late 1980s to the Present”, in: Cynthia Holder Rich (ed.). 2020. Christian Zionism in Africa, London, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. pp. 19 – 41.

4. Samwel Mhajida, 2021. “Motherhood, career development and modernization: Experiences of early post-colonial Tanzanian women”, Journal of Education, Humanities and Sciences, vol. 10 No.2 (special Issue), 2021, pp. 1 -16.

5. Samwel Mhajida “The border lies here and beyond: Datoga Land Claims in British Northern Tanzania, 1916 to 1950s”, Zeitschrift fuer Agrargescichte und Agrarsoziologie Jargang 69 (2021), Heft 2, pp. 43 - 63.

6. Angelus Mnenuka, Nives Kinunda and Samwel Mhajida “The Curse or Fertility of Land Clearing: How Migrant Labour Modified Gender-based Division of Labour in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania”, Africa Development, Volume XLVII, No. 4, 2022, pp. 53-75. (https://doi.org/10.57054/ad.v47i4.2977)

7. Samwel S. Mhajida review of: Maria C Marchetti-Mercer, Leslie Swartz, and Loretta Baldassar (editors), Transnational families in Africa: Migrants and the role of the information technology. Publisher: the Wits University Press, 2023. Pp. 224. ISBN: 978- 1776148653. Research Africa Reviews Vol. 8 No. 1, April 2024. Pp. 33-35.https://sites.duke.edu/researchafrica/ra-reviews/volume-8-2024/issue-1-april-2024/

8.Kinunda, Nives; Mnenuka, Angelus; and Mhajida, Samwel (2024) "Performing Masculinities: The Assumption of Men’s Roles by Women Left Behind by Male Migrant Labourers in Southern Tanzania," Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences: Vol. 13: No. 2, Article 15.
DOI: 10.56279/13/2/4

9. Samwel Mhajida “Envisioning a University in Tanzania: How the University of Dar es Salaam Metamorphosed amidst changing world” in: Roser Manzanera-Ruiz María P. Tudela-Vázquez  and Nacho Álvarez-Lucena (eds.) 2025. Universities and the Sustainable Development Goals: Critical Case Studies to Advance Agenda 2030, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 61 – 72.