After Dr. Abiy Ahmed was elected as Prime Minister of Ethiopia, he visited the US to “break the wall” that divided his government and the Ethiopian diaspora and “build the bridge” that will connect them. At each of his engagements, he invited Ethiopians to play an active and positive role to transform the nation. In his Los Angeles speech, Dr. Abiy said, “For a country like Ethiopia that has one of the longest and the oldest traditions of written literature that can be traced back to the times of stone inscriptions, it is shameful to have the current drought of [publications] and the sad reality of most of her citizens being unable to read and write. How could we know this sad reality and be able to have peace of mind and be vainglorious? For a country that has heroic sons like Elias Wondimu, who has established TSEHAI Publishers, how can you imagine [a country with] the fewest number of magazines and newspapers published each day?”

After twenty-four years of life in exile, Elias Wondimu heeded the call and returned to Ethiopia. It was at this time that the Enanbib, Enabib project was born, both as an answer to the Prime Minister’s call to help Ethiopia and as an extension of Elias’s contributions to the global knowledge production. With the cooperation, partnership, and collaboration of the Office of the Prime Minister and the National Archives and Library Agency, Enanbib, Enabib works to incite literacy as an agent of positive transformation in Ethiopia.

Rooted firmly in the belief in the connection between reading and flourishing, each project proposed under this campaign’s umbrella aims to reinvigorate Ethiopia’s reading culture with the understanding that this will give way to massive change in the country and, through this, change the world.

The original goals of TSEHAI Publishers—to transform Ethiopia and the world’s perception of Ethiopian culture by stimulating knowledge production and maintaining knowledge that would otherwise be overlooked or forgotten—are newly represented by the achievement of establishing Enanbib, Enabib. Just as Ethiopia is entering a new chapter of its history with the administration of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, so too does TSEHAI find itself in a new chapter, able to pursue its mission with renewed vigor within its previously estranged homeland.

So, we embark on a journey together: to read and to flourish. Join us in supporting these wonderful programs, through which this campaign can generate groundbreaking change in the nation and in the world.