Addisu Messele, the first person of sub-Saharan African ancestry elected to the Israeli Parliament, was born on June 16, 1961, in the Gondar region of Ethiopia to a Beta Israel (Jewish) family. As a student in the late 1970s, he became an active member of … Read MoreAddisu Messele (1961- )
Composer, scholar, and pioneer of musical notation, Saint Yared was born in Axum, Ethiopia on April 25, 505 AD. Little is known regarding his family background but scholars suggest he was part of the Axum priesthood. Yared studied intermittently throughout his life starting at the … Read MoreSaint Yared (505-571)
Asmara (Asmera) is the largest city and capital of the modern state of Eritrea. It was also the capital of Eritrea when it was a colony under Italian rule. Asmara is located in the highlands of Eritrea on the edge of the Great Rift Valley. … Read MoreAsmara, Eritrea (ca. 1000- )
In January 1962, Nelson Mandela, the emerging leader of the South African campaign against apartheid, spoke at a convention of Pan African advocates meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In that speech he outlined the history of the freedom struggle that he would one day personify. … Read More(1962) Nelson Mandela, “Address at the Conference of the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa”
Benjamin Zephaniah, poet, playwright, novelist and activist, was born on April 15, 1958, the first of eight children, in Birmingham, England. Zephaniah grew up in Wandsworth until the age of nine when his mother, a Jamaican nurse, fled his father, a postman from Barbados. Leaving … Read MoreBenjamin Zephaniah (1958- )
Anne Wortham, a prolific academic who has opposed aspects of the traditional civil rights movement, was born on November 26th 1941 in Jackson, Tennessee. The first of five children, she was raised in the segregated South where her parents instilled in her religious beliefs and … Read MoreAnne Wortham (1941- )
The Gondar College of Medical Sciences is located in Gondar in the northwestern part of Ethiopia. The college, founded in 1954, is the oldest health professional training institute in Ethiopia. The medical college was located in Gondar in 1954 in part because of the malaria … Read MoreThe Gondar College of Medical Sciences (1954- )
Gondar is the former capital of the emperors of Ethiopia and remains a regional center to this day. Around 1635, Emperor Fasiladas (reign 1632-67) began construction on a castle in the Gondar Valley near the shores of Lake Tana. The fortification was ideally situated along … Read MoreGondar, Ethiopia (ca. 1635- )
Addis Ababa was the last imperial capital of Ethiopia and serves as the capital of the modern state of Ethiopia. Addis Ababa came into existence in 1886 as a mineral springs resort for Ethiopia’s royal family and nobility. In 1892, Emperor Menilek II (r. 1889-1913) … Read MoreAddis Ababa, Ethiopia (1886- )
Site of some of the oldest hominid fossils, The Great Rift Valley in East Africa refers to a massive land depression, formed approximately twenty million years ago when two parallel fault lines pulled apart. The rift stretches along East Africa from the Jordan River Valley in southwest … Read MoreRift Valley in East Africa
