Professor Sozinho Francisco Matsinhe hails from Mozambique, where his training in Linguistics commenced at Eduardo Mondlane University. It continued in Tanzania, Dar-es-Salaam University and ended in Great Britain, University of London, with a PhD in Linguistics with special reference to Bantu Languages. His sojourn in Tanzania has provided him with the opportunity to acquire a reasonable competence in Swahili. His postdoctoral research has focused on language planning and language development, language contact and bilingualism in education, the use of African languages as medium of instruction in formal education as well as on Morphology and Syntax of Bantu languages. He was an Associate Professor in Unisa's Department of African Languages, where he taught courses on Phonology, Morphology and Syntax from 1992 until 2009.

On September 1, 2001 the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), a non -profit making foundation, commissioned him to conduct a situation analysis and establish t he nature of the  problems affecting the development of indigenous languages and multilingualism in Southern Africa region, focusing on Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and make recommendations on how best OSISA could contribute meaningfully to different options identified. Apart from establishing contacts with scholars and decision - makers, this project provided him with an opportunity to gain insight into the stage of development, promotion and use of indigenous languages in those countries. Similarly, his participation in the DAL-UNISA/AAU project of creating a Who's Who of African Scholars and a Database on Training and Research offered him an opportunity to establish and consolidate contacts with fellow academics.

Since December 2009, Professor Matsinhe has been entrusted by the African Union Commission with the responsibility of leading the Secretariat of the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) based in Bamako, Mali, whose mandate is to fast-track the development of African languages so that they are used in all domains of the society in partnership with the former colonial languages – English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.