By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
We saw in recent weeks that the years prior
to the Italian fascist invasion of 1935 witnessed a significant
expansion of both Government and Missionary education in Ethiopia.
Subsidised Government Education
One of the most important developments of this period, which has
passed unnoticed by many historians of Ethiopia is that students who
founded the Tafari Makonnen School, as we have seen, in 1925, were, two
years later, given a monthly allowance of three Ethiopian dollars, or
Maria Theresa thalers, a month. This stipend significantly widened the
class from which students were recruited, and did much moreover to
overcome parental opposition to their sons’ schooling.
Italian Government and Missionary Activity
Besides the French, whose educational role we examined in our last
issue, the Italians were also active. Their contribution was, however,
significantly less than that of their northern Latin sisters.
The Italian Government, which was open to the importance of improved
communications, particularly in view of its impending invasion of
Ethiopia, nevertheless opened a school of wireless telegraphy, to train
operators for its Legation and various provincial consulates, in Gondar,
Dessie, and elsewhere.
The Italian Consulate at Gondar, according to the contemporary
journalist Hermann Norden, likewise gave instruction to some two dozen
Ethiopian children of the locality.
Italian missionaries also played a valuable educational role. They
were to be found in several provinces, most notably in Kaffa and Walaga.
Italian missionaries which were also to the fore in the capital, where
the Consolata Mission, a Roman Catholic organisation, ran two schools,
one for boys, and the other for girls. Instruction in both was in
Italian. The pupils of these two latter schools were, however, mainly
Italians.
In Eritrea there was also a Capuchin school of arts and crafts, which
had an enrollment, in 1935, of 300 day students and 40 boarders.
Swedish Missionary Activity
A number of Swedish missionaries during this period also continued to
play a valuable role in education. The Swedish Evangelical Mission ran
two schools in the capital, one directed by the Rev. Axel Jonssen for
boys, the other, by Miss Tekla Nilsson, for girls. There was also a
boys’ school and a girls’ school at Lekemti, directed by the Rev. U.
Karlsson and Miss Stina Shold respectively, and a mixed school, for both
boys and girls, directed by the Rev. N. Nordfeld, at Nejo.
Another Swedish missionary organisation, the Bibeltronga Vanner, or
Friends of the Bible, ran a boys’ school and a girls’ school in the
capital, as well as a boys’ school at Gulale, directed by Miss Rostin,
and another at Harar.
The Americans
American missionary activity was also worthy of note. The principal
American missionary organisation, the United Presbyterian Mission,had
two schools, one at Sayo with 150 day-boys and 20 girl-boarders, and the
other school at Gore.
There was, in addition, an American school intended primarily for
children of the capital’s foreign community. This educational
establishment was operated by three American women. Instruction was in
English, Amharic and French.
The Egyptians
The Egyptian Government likewise operated a special school, the
Madrassat al Ittifak el Islam, for Arab and other Muslim children. Its
teaching staff was composed of four graduates of the Al Azhar school in
Cairo, who taught some two hundred Muslim students, many of whom were
Ethiopian.
Greeks, Armenians, and Indians
Special schools for foreign communities were also run by the Greeks,
Armenians and Indians. The Greek school, which was the largest, had some
250 students in 1935, but the Armenian could boast of the most modern
premises.
Missionary-Educated Ethiopians in Government Service
Prominent missionary-educated, high ranking Ethiopians employed
during this period included Berhane Markos, Director of Posts and
Telegraphs and later Consul at Port Said; Tadesse Mashesha, the
Emperor’s Secretary, and Director in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs;
Belachew, the Controller of the Franco-Ethiopian railway; and Medane
Gabre, a lawyer.
Printing Presses
The educational and other developments of this pre-war period were
accompanied by a significant expansion of printing presses, and printed
literature in general.
By the eve of the Italian war there were thus seven printing presses
in Addis Ababa: the Government press, which Emperor Menilek had founded
in 1910; the press of “Le Courrier d’Ethiopie”, which had been set up in
1913; the Emperor’s “Berhanena Salam” press, established in 1923; three
presses dating from 1926, namely, the “Goha-Tsebah” or “Dawn” printing
press, the “Hermis” printing press, which printed “L’Ethiopie
Commerciale”, the “Louc” printing press, founded by an Armenian, H.
Bagdassarian; and the “Artistic Printing Press”, founded in 1934 by two
other Armenians, E. and G. Dierrahian.
A factory for the production of blocks, for printing, was also established in 1934, by a Greek called Nicogos.
Seven Newspapers
By this time Addis Ababa could likewise boast no fewer than seven
newspapers, four of them in Amharic, two in French, and one in Italian.
The Amharic press comprised three weeklies: “Aymero”, the oldest of
all, which had four pages; “Berhanena Salam”, which, after Haile
Sellassie’s accession to power, was regarded as a semi-official
publication; Blattengeta’s “Atbiya Kokob”, or “Morning Star”, which was
managed by the Greek journalist Kavadias; and “Kasatie Berhan”, or
“Propagator of Light”, an eight page monthly, founded in 1935.
French, Italian, and Greek
The French language press consisted two papers: “Le Courrier
d’Ethiopie”, which appeared twice a week, and had eight to ten pages,
and since April 1932 ran a supplement , entitled “Le Petit Courrier
d’Ethiopie”, giving radio news; and “L’Ethiopie Commerciale”, a weekly
of twelve to fourteen pages.
The Italian newspaper, “Il Notizario” was a bi-monthly Fascist-run periodica, of six to eight pages, founded in 1933.
Mention should also be made of two short-lived Greek newspapers:
“Aithiopikos Kosmos”, or “Ethiopian World”, a weekly edited by P.K.
Vrennios from 1927 to 1931, and “Aithiopika Nea”, or “Ethiopian News”,
about which little has apparently been recorded.
On the eve of the war the Ethiopian and Italian Governments also
issued stenciled bulletins of sometimes fairly propagandist news
received by radio.
Published Abroad…
Mention may also made of several Ethiopian newspapers published abroad, prior to 1935.
The first, founded and edited bv Dr. Erich Weinzinger, an Austrian
resident in Addis Ababa, in 1926, was known sometimes in German, as
“Aethiopien-Korrespondenz” and sometimes in French, as “Correspondance
d’Ethiopie”. Something of a polyglot production, it carried articles in
German, French and English. It appeared irregularly, and was published
in a succession of different places: Paris and Vienna in 1926, Addis
Ababa in 1927, Paris from 1928 to 1931, Hanover in 1929, and Vienna in
1933.
The object of this pioneer publication was, as it declared, “to let
Ethiopia be better known in Europe”, and “to strengthen the economical
and social ties between Ethiopia and foreign lands” as well as to
“strongly” fight “the Imperialistic colonies of the Great Powers in
Africa.”
An extraordinarily high circulation of 10,000 copies per issue was
claimed. The Greek author Adrien Zervos, however, later scaled this down
to a mere 2,000, while one hostile French writer, A. Armandy, claimed
that the publication was not in fact read anywhere at all!
Two other foreign publications about Ethiopia were produced in Paris
before the war. These were “L’Ethiopie Nouvelle,” which was edited by a
Frenchman, A. Batailler, and published every two months; and “Ethiopie”,
a monthly, edited by Arturo and Madelaine Hirvet-Cappa.
After the outbreak of hostilities with Fascist Italy a handful of
newspapers devoted to the Ethiopian cause were founded abroad. They
comprised “La Voix de l’Ethiopie”, a short-lived quarterly, produced in
Paris in 1935 and 1936; the “Voice of Ethiopia”, a weekly, founded and
edited in New York by the Ethiopian doctor, Melaku Bayen; “Abyssinia, A
weekly Newspaper of the League of Nations in Action”, published for a
short time by the League of Nations Union, as a supplement to its
journal “Headway”; and Sylvia Pankhurst’s ‘‘New Times and Ethiopia
News,” which ran for twenty years, from 1936 to 1956, and issued a
number of Amharic supplements for distribution to the Ethiopian
Patriots.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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