Professor Andreas Eshete, the former president of Addis Ababa University who passed away on Thursday at age 79, often said that he was raised by three families: his biological parents, paternal uncle, and the Pankhurst family. The Pankhursts are no…
Tamirat Tola, who won the men’s marathon at the Paris Olympics with a record time of 2 hours and 6 minutes, was initially a reserve. He was called up to the Ethiopian team only after Boston Marathon winner Sisay Lemma…
In his memoir የዲፕሎማሲ ፋና (Yediplomasi Fana), Teruneh Zenna vividly describes the harrowing experience he spent detained at the Sendafa Police Training School in 1969 after participating in the “Land to the Tiller” demonstration. “When the police arrived, those of…
When I left a few weeks ago, I noticed that some things hadn’t changed in Addis Ababa: old cars still spewed diesel fumes, the traffic was as bad as ever, and the jams were unbelievably long. The traffic was so…
As Boris Adjemian’s narration reveals, the Arba Arba Ledjotch (Forty Children), who became the first imperial brass band, were not the first Armenian presence in the country. Armenians had already been established in the royal court for many generations preceding…
The story of the Arba Ledjotch l In 1924, a group of forty children who had survived the 1915 genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks and had formed a brass band at the Armenian monastery in Jerusalem were recruited and somewhat…
The Ethiopian singer Yemariam “Yema” Chernet has a gentle voice with a steely core, crafting an intimately forceful style and a lush feel that’s revealed on her debut album “Yedega Sew”. Based in Addis Ababa, Yema adeptly bridges the traditional…
While Bahru Zewde was a third-year student at Haile Selassie University (now Addis Ababa University) in 1968, he took part in a demonstration that left a deep impression on him. The demonstration did not center around a domestic issue, but…
Berhane Marqos Wolde Tsadik (1892-1943) was an interpreter, civil servant, diplomat, and government minister. He held several important roles in his career, starting as an interpreter at the Franco-Ethiopian railway and eventually rising to become the director-general of posts, telephones,…
On 17 December 1960 Emperor Haile Selassie, who was on a state visit to Brazil, returned hastily to Ethiopia after an attempted coup to oust him from power had failed. Paris Match, a French weekly pictorial magazine, sent its reporter,…