Penina Mlama

Penina Mlama, born Muhando on 3 March 1948 in Berega, in the Kilosa district, studied education and drama at the University of Dar es Salaam, where she also obtained a doctorate in language and linguistics and where she taught the performing arts; she published her plays under her birth name. Called upon like her contemporaries to put her art at the service of development after the Arusha Declaration, she chose to write in Swahili in order to be read in her own country rather than abroad, theorised this approach in an essay published in 1991 and wrote textbooks for the education of girls.

In the catalogue 1

• TheatreHatiaPenina Mlama · 1972not translated into EnglishLiterature