The expanding conflict in Ethiopia has resulted in damage to schools and educational institutions, with the country’s education ministry stating that 1.42 million students have been unable to attend classes in the Tigray region.
ndian academics in Ethiopia have been severely impacted by the growing turbulence and violence as a result of the Tigray conflict, a report in the Indian Express says.
The expanding conflict in Ethiopia has resulted in damage to schools and educational institutions, with the country’s education ministry stating that 1.42 million students have been unable to attend classes in the Tigray region.
Indian educators have historically played an important role in Ethiopia, Robert Shetkintong, India’s Ambassador in Addis Ababa, told indianexpress.com.
“The first batch of Indian teachers went to Ethiopia from Kerala in the 1950s,” said Muralidharan Nair, who spent nearly three decades as a teacher and principal in various institutions in the country, before returning to India in 2011.
The recruitment was part of Emperor Haile Selassie’s policy of westernisation that focused on ensuring fluency in English in Ethiopia but Ethiopia could not meet the high demand of salaries from Western countries and had to thus turn to India
As word spread of opportunity in these distant lands, teachers across India began responding to recruitment advertisements for employment in primary schools, directly conducted under the supervision of the Ethiopian embassy in New Delhi,
Indians were posted not just in the capital Addis Ababa, but they were also recruited for teaching positions in schools in smaller towns and remote villages, a trend that lasted for more than five decades.
In 1996, the Indian community established two schools in Addis Ababa that operated under the supervision of the Indian embassy, with the CBSE curriculum, for the community’s children.
As word spread of the quality of education and fees that were comparatively more affordable than the American and British schools, demand from Ethiopians led to the government allowing the Indian schools to admit Ethiopian students.
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“By the time people of our generation got to schools, there were quite a few Indians teaching, and not just in primary schools and high schools, but also universities,” said 40-year-old Mezgebwa Tedessa, during a phone interview from her Addis Ababa home.
Like other members of her family, Tedessa’s husband studied in three different towns across Ethiopia, some nearly 500 km away from the capital, where he was taught by Indian educators wherever he went. “So Indian teachers were present everywhere,” she said.
Indians have always been held in high regard in the country, people interviewed for this report told indianexpress.com, a tradition that has not changed till date, in part because of respect and acknowledgement of the teachers’ contributions. “If an Ethiopian saw an Indian they would say ‘Hind Astamari’. ‘Astamari’ means teacher in Amharic and all Indians are called ‘Hind’. The synonym for the word ‘Indian’ is ‘teacher’,” said Nair.
As word spread of opportunity in these distant lands, teachers across India began responding to recruitment advertisements for employment in primary schools, directly conducted under the supervision of the Ethiopian embassy in New Delhi
While the respect and goodwill has remained, the ongoing domestic turbulence has resulted in concerns for the future of the large community of Indian academics in the country and whether they will still be able to contribute to the country’s education system.
When the conflict broke out last November, Prof. Sanjay Mishra was teaching sociology in Adigrat University in Tigray. The rapidly deteriorating situation in the region resulted in closures of public spaces and institutions that had been facing difficulties brought on due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“For close to two years, classes haven’t been held. First they closed due to Covid-19, and then elections started, which was followed by the conflict in November. Classes were held for only two to three months and we somehow managed to grade student papers,” said Mishra.
The suspension of classes and the escalating conflict in Ethiopia compelled many Indian educators, most of whom now teach in colleges and universities, to return to India.
This past year, when the fighting escalated, like many of his colleagues, Mishra found himself hurriedly leaving for India. “I have come back to India with unpaid bills pending with vendors. I had to leave before I could pay the Xerox shop the full amount. Despite (the people of Tigray) being in such dire straits, they really cooperated with us because they knew we couldn’t access bank accounts,” Mishra said. “I found good human beings across Ethiopia.”
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