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    Plan détaillé Texte intégral 1. Wolaita at the edge of the nation? 2. The nation and its “modernity” 3. The school: imaginary and materiality of the nation 4. School dynamics in Wolaita in the light of power relations Notes de bas de page

    Educating the Nation in Ethiopia

    Ce livre est recensé par

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    Table des matières

    General Introduction

    p. 29-39

    Dédicace

    To Weyzero Etenat Fekadu, Ato Tesfaye Belay and their wonderful family

    Texte intégral 1. Wolaita at the edge of the nation? 2. The nation and its “modernity” 3. The school: imaginary and materiality of the nation 4. School dynamics in Wolaita in the light of power relations Notes de bas de page

    Texte intégral

    1. Wolaita at the edge of the nation?

    1In 1999 and 2000, the inhabitants of the Wolaita region of southwest Ethiopia rose up against the introduction of a new administrative and school language, WoGaGoDa, a form of “Esperanto” created from the four languages spoken in northern Omo. WoGaGoDa is an acronym of Wolaita, Gamo, Goffa and Dawro. The reform came after the Wolaita language had been in use in administration and schools for six years, in the wake of the new language policy established by the 1994 Federal Constitution. The movement started in the cities, which were the first to receive textbooks printed in the new language, and spread very rapidly across the school network to reach the majority of the population (Data 2006). Petitions sent to the government at the time emphasised respect for the new constitution, which guaranteed every “nation, nationality and people of Ethiopia” the right to promote their culture; they explained that the introduction of WoGaGoDa was a step backwards in history, as the Wolaita had only recently finally gained their rightful place in the nation after a century of oppression (Guidi 2012). They highlighted the violence of the conquest of their kingdom in 1894 by the armies of Ethiopian Emperor Menilek II (1891–1913) and the oppression and marginalisation they had experienced under Haile Selassie’s regime (1930–74). Their status had only been improved very recently: first under the Marxist-Leninist military regime of the Derg1 (1974–91), and then under the federal regime of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The authors of the petitions noted that despite these decades of oppression, the Wolaita had always served Ethiopia.2 They thus reaffirmed their belonging to the nation, while recalling that this belonging also required respect for their identity. Building on the evolution of their status since integration into Ethiopia in 1894, and affirming both an Ethiopian and a Wolaita identity, they posed the question of how their group might exist in present-day federal Ethiopia.

    2This sense of dual belonging was formed over a fifty-year period between Haile Selassie’s 1941 policy of centralisation and the fall of the Derg in 1991. Relations between the Wolaita and Ethiopia—its central state, its local administration and its dominant culture—were constructed out of convergences, divergences, hesitations and negotiations, and there are at least three main reasons why it is difficult to see how the big picture emerged: firstly, because a “nationality” is always structured by internal distinctions and hierarchies, even though its elites may present it as homogeneous for the purposes of promoting their claims; secondly, because the policies of the various governments have been less than unambiguous; and, finally, because Wolaita society has been reshaped in multifaceted ways over the course of fifty years. The social hierarchies and relationships of domination within local society have been transformed under the effects of external constraints and their own tensions, and these transformations have changed the ways of representing, being and acting within the national political community.

    3By treating school education as a meeting place between state policies and societies, and by analysing how reconfiguring the school acts on the structuring of power (Gérard 1997), this book seeks to understand how local identities have been reshaped within local, national and international dynamics since the first government school in Wolaita opened in 1941. It makes a contribution to the history of national construction as seen from the peripheries, and poses the question of how they play a part in redefining the nation.

    2. The nation and its “modernity”

    4The protean idea of nationhood is at the heart of this work because nation-building has been the object of incessant tensions, as well as a challenge for successive governments, since the expansion of Ethiopia’s borders at the end of the 19th century, a process that strengthened the diversity of an already heterogeneous kingdom. How does it stay together? On what material and imaginary basis should its existence be based? Under Haile Selassie, being Ethiopian meant speaking Amharic, adopting the Christian faith of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church3 and recognising oneself in the myths of northern Ethiopia. The Derg relaxed the cultural criteria for belonging to the nation, claiming that it wanted to put an end to the “oppression of nationalities.” Declaring itself to be Marxist-Leninist, it redefined the country in the direction of egalitarianism. Language, religion, culture and “nationality” were no longer discriminatory elements, at least in theory. The nation was to be developed in “masses” united by class solidarity and the struggle against internal and external enemies. The two regimes used two different strategies to cement the population horizontally and aggregate it vertically to the state. Centralisation increased, but the way the centre dominated the peripheries changed.

    5Historians who have attempted to theorise the concept of “nation” have always come up against its evanescent nature, which defies any attempt at a definition that might offer an exhaustive meaning. As Eric Hobsbawm says, it is impossible to provide a universal definition based on “objective” criteria such as language, territory, history or cultural traits, as these criteria are themselves vague, and never fully overlap (Hobsbawm 1992, 5–6). Therefore, in the absence of a clear definition, approaches based on representations appeared to be the most functional. The most famous example was proposed by Benedict Anderson: nations are “imagined communities,” “members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson 2006 (1983), 6). This perspective invites us to think of nations as entities in perpetual construction. How are national imaginaries formed and reproduced? Needing to be alive in the minds of its members, and taking shape in individuals, the nation is then the object of constant political education.

    6The history of education proposed here is absolutely consistent with Anderson’s perspective when it comes to understanding the sources of a national imagination, but two reservations must first be applied to both Anderson’s and Hobsbawm’s positions. A concept of the nation as eminently “modern”—without ever really knowing what the word “modern” means—has led both these authors to situate its birth in the supposed cradle of “modernity”—Europe—to which Anderson adds the “Creole States” of America. Anderson’s point of departure is that “nation-ness, as well as nationalism are cultural artefacts” that “became ‘modular,’ capable of being transplanted” (Anderson 2006 [1983], 4). For his part, Hobsbawm argues that “the modern nation, as a state or as a set of people aspiring to become one, differs in number, extent and nature from the communities with which human beings have identified over almost all historical time;” its “fundamental characteristic… is precisely its modernity” (Hobsbawm 1992, 91, 35). Two things stand out here: the first is the Eurocentric perspective of these claims, and the second is the rapid and confusing use of the term “modernity.” It is unclear whether it describes a historical period—the contemporary era—or whether it is an analytical category, in which case, what does “modern” mean, and why would the nation be “modern?”

    7First of all, it will be helpful to mention Partha Chatterjee’s reservation about Anderson’s theory: “If nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain ‘modular’ forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine?” (Chatterjee 1993, 5). The British historian Christopher Bayly adds that “the most vigorous stirring of nationality in the late 19th century was a global phenomenon. It emerged contemporaneously in large parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas, rather than first in Europe, later to be exported ‘overseas.’” This is why “in future, the theorists of nationalism will have to bring the extra-European world into a central position of their analyses, rather than seeing it as an ‘add-on bonus.’” (Bayly 2007, 327) Those of us who study Ethiopia can only agree with Bayly’s suggestion.

    8The Ethiopian case goes even further. Not only did 19th century Ethiopia experience a burst of nationalism as a reaction to European imperialism, but national sentiment based on a common imagination also already existed. Marie-Laure Derat has shown how as early as the 15th century, the state used the network of churches to homogenise the population under its authority by creating, cementing and renewing a collective imagination (Derat 2002, 45). Two people living at opposite ends of the kingdom were aware that they had the same sovereign, and that they shared the same myths and the same sense of historical continuity; in short, they belonged to the same political community.4 This is why, after recalling with Perry Anderson that no European medieval state was founded on nationality, Donald Donham stresses the fact that “whatever else can be said about Abyssinian society, it was founded upon a nationality” (Donham 2002, 13). This was because the correspondence between a government, a territory and a population was established; because a national imagination existed, rooted in Ethiopian history, which owed nothing to European “modernity.”

    9It is true, however, that, from the beginning of the 20th century, and more particularly from 1941 onwards, the schools opened by the Ethiopian government were places where European knowledge was imported for the purpose of centralisation, which was presented as “modernisation” leading to “development.” Until 1974, the Western capitalist world (the USA was the main supporter of Haile Selassie’s government) was an inspiration to the Ethiopian elites. After the 1974 revolution, however, the Derg turned to the Eastern Bloc. The USSR, the GDR and to a lesser extent Cuba became the regime’s main allies, and school objectives and curricula were changed accordingly. Capitalism and the Soviet form of socialism were both presented as models for attaining “modernity.” Although it can in no way be used as a category of analysis for research, “modernity”—and its corollary modernisation—was therefore a powerful framework for interpreting the world that determined the actions taken by the actors. The state lent itself legitimacy by claiming to be the custodian of the “modern,” and therefore of the future of the nation. The governed appropriated this concept as an aspiration for a better life. Both the opposition to Haile Selassie’s regime in the 1960s and the revolution of 1974 were staged in the name of progress and conceptualised by discourses that contrasted backwardness with modernity. The word “modernity” should therefore be understood as a set of representations that were understood by actors in a plurality of ways.

    10Like the idea of “modernity,” the idea of nationhood was not advanced by the state alone. Based on Stalin’s theory of nationalities, the Ethiopian student movement, which developed in the 1960s, proposed the idea of a multicultural, multilingual and multiconfessional nation in opposition to Haile Selassie’s homogenising vision. The definition of the nation and its criteria for inclusion and exclusion lay at the heart of tensions over the legitimisation or contestation of power, membership of the national political community or marginalisation. The aim here is not to study the formation of the “Ethiopian nation” based on a case study, but to question the multiple and changing relationships of the inhabitants of a region within the national whole. This involves looking at the various ways in which the idea of nation has been interpreted, questioned, negotiated, contested and redefined. In Wolaita, this process has been deeply rooted in the lived experience of integration in Ethiopia, and has been especially embodied in school education.

    11A history of education that looks at school dynamics in relation to the normative definitions of the nation and the realities of the national imagination cannot be properly accomplished by analysing discourses and representations alone, which are inextricably linked to modes and relations of production, as well as to the distribution and practices of power. The educational historian Carl Kaestle has recalled two essential methodological elements: the social structure and its transformations are an essential starting point for explaining educational dynamics and the trajectories of school systems; and the confrontation between the dominant ideology and those of subgroups provides a conceptual support for understanding how educational processes function (Kaestle 2000, 121).

    3. The school: imaginary and materiality of the nation

    12School actors are located at the point where local, national and international dynamics converge. State school education is an iconic instrument of the political and cultural practices of a government vis-à-vis its citizens, as well as a place of negotiation where the symbolic and material aspirations of those who govern and those who are governed, and their respective interpretations of what the social world is and should be, meet, confront and transform each other. The school as an instrument for the legitimisation of power and normalisation that applies itself to shaping ways of thinking and being is used by the state to ensure that its concept of the nation materialises. First, as Pierre Bourdieu has pointed out, “the major mission of educational institutions is to build the nation as a population endowed with […] the same common sense” (Bourdieu 2003, 142). Second, a school education imposes linguistic and cultural criteria that give the nation a defined identity. Finally, it ensures that students become future governed people living in the time of the nation: it teaches a common past that has been reorganised or invented to make the political community a long-term reality, and it seeks to inculcate the idea of a community of destiny by conveying the myth of progress. From this perspective, receiving a school education in many ways means receiving a baptism of “modernity.” The school carries the binary division between tradition and modernity within it, and therefore the separation of the nation into two parts, one of which is “modern” and the other to be “modernised.” The “modern” and the “traditional” polarise the lack of agreement on what the nation should be as a community in the making.

    13After making the point that the nation is an act of imagination, Anderson adds that “all communities larger than the primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined” (Anderson 2006 [1983], 6). The history of education suggests that while this idea should be retained, it should be somewhat reworked, or at least that the exclusivity of imagination should be reduced. Christine Chivallon has noted that while Anderson provides a remarkable demonstration of the fact that the creation of the imaginary is based on various types of material support—books, newspapers, museums, monuments and so on—he does not include the materiality of the nation according to its theoretical definition (Chivallon 2007, 131–72). However, looking at the link between the school as an institution and nation-building tells us that the imaginary and materiality are not dissociated from each other. The school is an instrument for shaping the imagination through the teaching of history, myths and knowledge in general. It is also endowed with great materiality through its books, its classes, its enclosed spaces and its entry and exit times. It exerts pedagogical actions and constraints on the minds and bodies of its pupils that are far from being imaginary. Its buildings, which are inscribed into the landscape, mark the physical presence of the state and the nation at points scattered across the governed territory. Finally, while the sense of common belonging is based on the imagination, entry into the nation is not a purely imaginary act. The relationship to the nation and the school is deeply rooted in the psychologically and physically experienced concrete social reality of power relations. The “real” and the imaginary cannot be separated.

    14It is through schools that increasing numbers of Wolaita have forced their way into the nation. Schools are one of the instruments by which the centre asserts power over its peripheries, but they are also a tool that enables the dominated to mitigate the most glaring aspects of domination by adapting to the structures imposed on them. Major state projects also do not have the same meaning in the centre as they do in the context of a local area: perceptions change as the scale changes. The same is true of the polysemic categories that support these projects—such as nation, progress, development and civilisation—which actors invest in and operate in multiple registers of their own. There can therefore be a wide gap between the homogeneity of a school policy and the heterogeneity of the uses made of it by social actors, between the major projects of the former and the “everyday politics” of the latter. For the state, progress is conceived at a macro level: it may, for example, mean a centralised and efficient administration or an increase in national wealth. For an individual, a family or a social group, on the other hand, it may mean access to employment and a way out of a miserable agricultural life and of a status of domination. Others may embrace larger-scale collective projects, which may or may not be those proposed by the state. The relations a society maintains with the central power and the national political community are understood through these differences, and the school is a privileged place from which to observe them. The ways in which school discourses and practices are received and interpreted must therefore be investigated and analysed in detail, as they reflect the diverse and evolving ways in which people view state policies.

    4. School dynamics in Wolaita in the light of power relations

    15Drawing on the work of the historian Maurizio Gribaudi, one of the main proponents of microhistory, Jean-Hervé Jézéquel has shown that, during the colonial period in French West Africa, the logic of schooling eluded linear explanations, and that approaches in terms of macro-variables were not enough to account for it. This is why he set out to “restore the role of local configurations—i.e. the local fabric of social relations and affiliations—in the explanation of global historical processes” (Jézéquel 2003, 422). It is in line with works on the sociology, anthropology and demography of education, which gave new impetus to educational research on Africa from the second half of the 1990s by refining the analysis of the demand for school and the specific logic underlying it (Pilon & Yaro 2001). For her part, Hélène Charton has shown how schooling was a form of resistance that enabled some Kenyans to “appropriate the tools of domination” and thus gain a foothold in the new social and political space imposed by British colonisation (Charton 2002, 3). These two perspectives invite us to consider social structures and power relations as central determinants of schooling strategies. How have the different positions in the distribution of power in Wolaita helped determine the school practices of different individuals and social groups? The relationship with school provides information on the way in which the actors question social structures and the position they occupy within them.

    16In the manner of Michel Foucault’s “resistances,” school pedagogy acts as a revealer. It makes it possible “to highlight power relations, to see where they fit in, to discover their points of application and the methods they use” (Foucault 1994, 225). On the one hand, the forms of power inherent in “school culture”—a set of norms that define the knowledge to be taught and the behaviour to be inculcated, and a set of practices that enable the transmission of this knowledge and the incorporation of these practices (Julia 1995, 354)—are a part of, and reveal, the power relations that prevail in the social environment. On the other hand, because “forms of power—generally the more microscopic ones—generate the social” (Dussel 2001, 208), school culture spreads beyond school walls. From both perspectives, the history of education makes it possible to understand how individuals and groups experience power relations, how they relate to them and how they transform them, knowingly or unknowingly.

    17The political, social, economic and cultural realities in Wolaita in the 20th century justify this approach. Wolaita is a crossroads region 300 kilometres south of Addis Ababa that was conquered by Emperor Menilek II in 1894. At the time, it was a powerful kingdom surrounded by vassal states, and occupied a position of regional hegemony (Planel 2008, 131–40). When it was forcibly integrated into Ethiopia, it lost its sovereignty and declined from a central to a peripheral position. Resistance to the Ethiopian army was severely punished. According to Bahru Zewde, Wolaita was incorporated after one of the bloodiest campaigns of the entire expansion process (Bahru 2001, 64). What had previously been a kingdom now came under the direct control of the Ethiopian administration. Land was distributed to Menilek II’s soldiers, together with the right to impose tributes and profit from the work of peasants. These soldiers did not own the land: they were concessionaires with extensive political and judicial powers, and exercised power on behalf of the government. Armed settlers sent from the north assisted them with controlling the conquered populations. This group of new masters was assisted by Wolaita personnel at the lower levels of the administration. Under the close control of the conquerors, they were responsible for collecting taxes and ensuring justice and policing at village level. Finally, the new system rapidly integrated the large local families, including the royal family, who, like the conquerors, enjoyed rights to huge estates (Planel 2008, 159). Following liberation from the brief Italian occupation between 1936 and 1941, the government launched a land privatisation movement. Some of those who were entitled to the proceeds of the land and the people who worked it gradually became landowners, while others remained concessionaires. Nevertheless, this movement did not significantly change the distribution of power or the way it was exercised. According to Sabine Planel, the situation of the peasants actually worsened: on the one hand, it was they who bore the brunt of most of the new taxes created by the government to rationalise property taxes (Planel 2008, 152), while on the other, they had no legal ties to the land, as had been the case before, and could be evicted by the owner at any time (Bahru 2001, 192). In short, they became more vulnerable, while remaining just as miserable.

    18The society of settlers diversified after the Italian occupation. In Soddo, the military garrison founded by the conquerors that gradually became the capital city of Wolaita, and in smaller towns, small traders and civil servants gradually joined the armed settlers and the new landlords. A small number of Wolaita also slowly settled there. As the city was integrated into the national space, it gradually became a place where people mixed in an “Amhara melting pot”: in the city, Amharic was spoken and the townspeople joined the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The settlers who came to try their luck in the south travelled from all over the country, not only from the north, but also from Gurage and Oromo and their neighbours the Kambatta and Hadiya (Almaz 1984, 24). Nevertheless, in the eyes of the rural inhabitants—who made up the overwhelming majority of the population—the city remained the territory of the conquerors, the location of the “Amhara” power. This complexification of urban society, and the very fact that many landlords were Wolaita, did not truly prevent a binary interpretation: actors on both sides of the great power divide reified the categories “Amhara” and “Wolaita” (Planel 2008, 162). The divisions between conqueror and conquered and between “Amhara” and “Wolaita” overlapped, and formed a reading grid according to which the actors interpreted the power relations under which they lived. Therefore, speaking of this binary opposition should not prevent finer divisions from being taken into account.

    19Political, economic and military domination was accompanied by a cultural domination of northern Ethiopia based on Christianity, awareness of a history dating back to antiquity, an emperor chosen by God, the Amharic language and the practice of writing. When taken together, these elements delimited a “civilised” space in the eyes of the conquerors, and at the same time legitimised the subjugation of the conquered populations. The Wolaita language and religion, and its identity in general, were relegated to a place outside this space of civilisation, and were denied or humiliated. In short, Wolaita corresponded to John Markakis’ definition of periphery: it was a situation—and not a place—in which “powerlessness, economic exploitation and cultural discrimination add up to a severe form of marginalisation, the defining feature of the periphery” (Markakis 2011, 7). Periphery is therefore defined less by geographical distance than by a position in the distribution of the power and resources originating from the centre. Thus, while the rural areas of Wolaita were in a peripheral position, this was much less true of the city of Soddo: Wolaita society was itself crossed by the dividing line that separated the centre from the periphery.

    20The issue here, based on a historical analysis of educational dynamics, is therefore to place the formation of the national imagination within the materiality of social life and the political, economic and cultural relations of domination. Almost thirty years ago, Donald Donham recalled that while the 20th century history of Ethiopia as seen from the centre was relatively well known at the time:

    “Another story remains untold, for there were many “others” who helped make twentieth-century Ethiopia. These other Ethiopians lived their lives mostly in the periphery rather than at the political center; they were governors sent from Addis Ababa, northern settlers out to seek their fortunes at the frontiers and, most of all, they were the common peasants, tenants, and slaves created in the wake of Menilek’s expansion into the south.” (Donham 2002, 3)

    21His interpretation is still relevant today. The historiography of southern Ethiopia suffers from a limited number of works and is caught up in weighty political stakes. A history based on a “multi-centred” and “inclusive” narrative of the nation’s past is struggling to emerge (Triulzi 2002, 276). On the one hand, academic history is having difficulty moving away from the national level (Clapham 2002a, 37–38), while on the other, the history of the south is currently dominated by nationalist authors, notably Oromo, who write history according to their own plans for political independence. The history of education we propose here has been placed as close as possible to the lived experience of individuals and groups, and is sensitive to the effects of power relations, as well as to micro-phenomena linked to national and international dynamics. It contributes to rediscovering the history of these silent actors, these “others” whom Donham speaks of, away from the great simplifying schemes.

    22This research is based in particular on some forty oral interviews conducted in Wolaita and Addis Ababa, which have made it possible to go back as far as the opening of the first school in 1941. Administrators, teachers, former students from various social backgrounds and peasants with very little schooling granted interviews as witnesses, actors or individuals with specific knowledge of one field or another. Finally, the interviews reveal how the actors interpret their history, and that of their group, their region and their country. The interviews were semi-directive, relatively free discussions on themes or events I proposed to the people I consulted. Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan reminds us that the course of an interview depends “on the strategies of the two (or more) partners in the interaction,” “on their cognitive resources” and on the context within which the relationship is situated (Olivier de Sardan 2008, 56). I therefore paid particular attention to the interactive nature of the interview and its knowledge effects. This oral history was collected in the particular context of struggles for the recognition of minority cultures and access to the centre’s resources in federal Ethiopia. Ten years after the revolt against WoGaGoDa I referred to at the beginning, the school question, and especially the issue of the languages of instruction, continued to crystallise powerful political stakes between cultural recognition through the Wolaita language and national integration through Amharic, against a backdrop of social mobility and struggles for a monopoly of legitimacy (Guidi 2015). The views of the people I consulted guided their perceptions of the past, and invited me to be cautious about my own interpretations. However, the political issues that constitute my data collection also allowed me to add new elements and greater detail to the questions I was asking about the past. My hope is that this historical perspective will help us to better understand the present by both adding to and shedding new light on the research on “ethno-linguistic”5 federalism.

    23These oral sources explain and complete a varied corpus of written sources. The official curricula and reports produced by the Ministry of Education illustrate the aims of the school system, the ways in which the government included education in its political projects. The organisation of teaching, the general objectives and the more specific purposes of each subject reveal the knowledge, skills and values to be inculcated. The school literature, especially on history, geography, civics, political education and reading, shows how the Haile Selassie and Derg regimes, respectively, shaped the nation’s past and projected its future, and how education legitimised their power and political projects, defining the criteria for joining the nation as well as the values and behaviour to be adopted. Finally, school songs were collected orally and from the press. Singing was a very present activity in the pupils’ daily lives throughout the period being studied. Written especially to be accurately memorised, these songs bear detailed messages with a direct political impact and a considerable power of incorporation. All these oral and written sources make it possible to approach the school system from multiple perspectives: from those of the Ministry of Education officials to the inhabitants of the villages, including teachers and pupils, from the small towns and the provincial capital. Comparing them reveals the different ways in which actors at various levels of the school system interpret and appropriate knowledge, representations, values and behaviours to be inculcated, and bear witness on how meaning is constructed and how imaginations are forged.

    Notes de bas de page

    1The Derg (“committee” in Geez, an ancient Ethiopian language) was the military committee that gradually came to power during the popular revolution that overthrew the Haile Selassie regime in 1974. By extension, it also refers to the military government led by Mengestu Haile-Mariam (1974–91).

    2Wanna Wagesho, የወላይታ ሕዝብ ታሪክ (History of the Wolaita People) (Addis Ababa: Berhanenna Selam Printing Press, 2003), 172.

    3Tewahedo means “unified” in Geez, a reference to the unity of the nature of Christ.

    4Drawing on discussions with Marie-Laure Derat, I take the liberty of crossing the line between the state's desire to unify and the reality of a popular feeling of common belonging.

    5Ethiopian “ethno-linguistic” federalism is based on the Nationalities Report produced by Stalin at Lenin’s request. It was translated into Amharic, and served as the basis for the studies of the Institute for the Studies of Ethiopian Nationalities (ISEN), which was established under the Derg in 1983. the EPRDF regime, which came to power in 1991, also adhered to Stalin’s theory of nationalities, considering the mother tongue as the main marker for defining a nationality, and divided the country into regions established according to language.

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    1The Derg (“committee” in Geez, an ancient Ethiopian language) was the military committee that gradually came to power during the popular revolution that overthrew the Haile Selassie regime in 1974. By extension, it also refers to the military government led by Mengestu Haile-Mariam (1974–91).

    2Wanna Wagesho, የወላይታ ሕዝብ ታሪክ (History of the Wolaita People) (Addis Ababa: Berhanenna Selam Printing Press, 2003), 172.

    3Tewahedo means “unified” in Geez, a reference to the unity of the nature of Christ.

    4Drawing on discussions with Marie-Laure Derat, I take the liberty of crossing the line between the state's desire to unify and the reality of a popular feeling of common belonging.

    5Ethiopian “ethno-linguistic” federalism is based on the Nationalities Report produced by Stalin at Lenin’s request. It was translated into Amharic, and served as the basis for the studies of the Institute for the Studies of Ethiopian Nationalities (ISEN), which was established under the Derg in 1983. the EPRDF regime, which came to power in 1991, also adhered to Stalin’s theory of nationalities, considering the mother tongue as the main marker for defining a nationality, and divided the country into regions established according to language.

    Educating the Nation in Ethiopia

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    Guidi, P. (2024). General Introduction. In Educating the Nation in Ethiopia (1‑). Centre français des études éthiopiennes. https://doi.org/10.4000/12iyj
    Guidi, Pierre. « General Introduction ». In Educating the Nation in Ethiopia. Addis-Abeba: Centre français des études éthiopiennes, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4000/12iyj.
    Guidi, Pierre. « General Introduction ». Educating the Nation in Ethiopia, Centre français des études éthiopiennes, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4000/12iyj.

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    Guidi, P. (2024). Educating the Nation in Ethiopia (S. Dix, Trad.; 1‑). Centre français des études éthiopiennes. https://doi.org/10.4000/12iy3
    Guidi, Pierre. Educating the Nation in Ethiopia. Traduit par Simon Dix. Addis-Abeba: Centre français des études éthiopiennes, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4000/12iy3.
    Guidi, Pierre. Educating the Nation in Ethiopia. Traduit par Simon Dix, Centre français des études éthiopiennes, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4000/12iy3.
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