The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) donated legal textbooks, valued at $120,000 (6.5 million Birr) to the people of Ethiopia. These textbooks were designed and written by Ethiopian lawyers and legal scholars with technical assistance provided through USAID. The Ethiopian Law Schools Association (ELSA) will distribute these textbooks to all 40 law schools in Ethiopia to train Ethiopian undergraduate law students.
The donation of these textbooks was celebrated at an event held at Elilly International Hotel in Addis Ababa, attended by Tesfaye Negewo from the Ministry of Education and Adam Schmidt, USAID/Ethiopia’s Deputy Mission Director. Student representatives, deans, and faculty from various law schools, along with civil society and judicial institutions attended the ceremony.
There are 40 universities in Ethiopia with law schools that provide graduate and undergraduate courses, but until now, these law schools lacked a standard set of well-researched, comprehensive, and up-to-date textbooks. To address this need, USAID’s Feteh (Justice) activity supported the development and publication of textbooks for four core courses for undergraduate law students: Ethiopian Criminal Law (Revised Edition), Ethiopian Constitutional Law (Revised Edition), Ethiopian Tax Law, and Ethiopian Employment Law.
An estimated 2,000 undergraduate law students, representing the next generation of judges, public prosecutors, lawyers and policy advisors of the country, are expected to benefit each year from these new textbooks. The electronic versions of these textbooks will be available online through ELSA’s website, so students across Ethiopia will have access to the textbooks wherever they are.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia.
