From 1955 up to 1958 Samb Makharam trained as an actor at the Centre d’Art Dramatique de la Rue Blanche in Paris[2] and performed in the movies Tamango (1957) directed by John Berry and Les Tripes au soleil (1958) by Claude Bernard-Aubert [fr; de; hu; lb].

In 1955 he founded the Paris theater group Les Griots uniting various Antillean and African actors such as Timité Bassori, Toto Bissainthe, Robert Liensol [fr; ht], and Sarah Maldoror.

[3] He returned to France to join the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF) as an assistant director for television.

On returning to Senegal in 1964, Samb Makharam worked for the Ministry of Information there,[2] was a cameraman with the Senegalese TV news,[4] and served as a director and producer at Radio Sénégal (Dakar).

Samb Makharam served as the Secretary General of the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) from 1971 to 1977.