My good friend and scholarly mentor B. Mbye Cham, Distinguished Professor of African Literature and Film at the respected Historically Black University of Howard, USA, has died at 78. He was a pioneer Gambian scholar and Tenured Professor, in the same league with the late Professor Sulayman Nyang(Howard) and Lamin Sanneh(Yale). Professor Cham combined active scholarly life in African Film Studies, and practiced the seventh art himself as a producer, and member of several juries of prestigious African Film Festivals. He had a sound educational background.
Born in Banjul in 1947, he attended The Gambia High School from 1960 to 1967; University of Dakar, Senegal, 1967-1968, where his studies were disrupted by the students revolt of May-June, 1968 against the Neo-colonial President Senghor. Prof. Cham took the surer option of continuing his studies for a degree in French Literature at the Universite De Besancon, where he qualified for the License. He finally got his BA in French at Temple University, USA in 1971. He took the normal four years for an undergrad degree but did so across three continents! In 1978, he got his Phd in African Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In later years, this university was to become the choice for numerous other Gambians to study agriculture, history and economics.
From 1980 to his demise last week, Professor was Cham was associated with Howard University in Washington D.C, where he rose through the academic ranks to become a tenured Professor at the Department of African Studies. He Chaired the Howard African Studies Centre.
At Howard he also led a prolific research and publications life. He churned up journal articles and book chapters on Sembene Ousmane (1923-2007), the radical Senegalese film maker and novelist; on Mungo Beti(1932-2001), the fiery Cameroon writer and on Senegealse and West African Cinema.
This solid academic parcours made him a highly revered attendee at the leading African Film Festivals. He served in the Jury at FESPACO Film Festival in Burkina, at the Zanzibar Film Festival and much recently at the New York African Film Festival. Indeed, aside the Malian Prof. Manthia Diawara, Prof. Cham was the guru of African cinematic criticism.
But he did more than critic African film. He produced films. In fact, a few weeks ago, he was in Banjul, and invited me and Majula Swareh, a Gambian scholar at Harvard, to review the rough cut of the film he has directed on The Gambian sculptor Comrade Ebou Sillah(1946-2006). He and myself have worked on this film for the past 20 years. Whenever I believed it was ready to premiere, he will tell me ‘send more, more stuff’. Finally, last month he was completely satisfied that the film was ready to premiere in Banjul. After two hours of careful watch at his Kotu home, we agreed that the premiere will hold at the Sir Dawada Kairaba Jawara Conference Centre in November. Another film he has been working until his death, was the ‘Ghana Boys’. We co-authored an article on the Gambian boys who, in 1961, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana airlifted from Bathurst to Accra to study as there were only two High Schools in the country. He decided, with my support, to turn the history article into a film. Already, Prof. has interviewed many surviving ‘Ghana Boys’ like the trade union leader Pa Modou Gento Faal.
Prof. Cham was a brilliant scholar, prodigious and apt. He championed African heritage through its film and literature. He liked to associate with me, and was quite appreciative of my own modest contribution to his projects. He sent me books regularly, and introduced me to the genre of African film and photography.
His demise should make us reflect on his generation of world class Gambian scholars, who unfortunately are almost unknown in The Gambia except in tight family and friends’ circles. When he, Prof Nyang, Sanneh, Dr. Tijan Sallah were at the acme of their scholarly lives, The Gambia had no university, and therefore could hardly engage them. When The Gambia had a university in the early 2000s, they were near the end of their rich academic careers, and unable to contribute to the progress of The Gambia University. For reasons like the harsh political rule, and jealous local faculty who saw them as Peeing Toms. Prof. Mbye was celebrated in other parts of Africa, exceptThe Gambia.
Having said this, I admit that I have lost a good mentor and friend. The Gambia has lost a scholar of world repute.To his many students, colleagues, family and friends, I convey my sincere condolences for his soul to rest in perfect peace.
Mbye Cham, Gambian scholar of Literature and African Film, born in Bathurst, 1947, died in USA August 29, 2025.
