The International Conference of Ethiopian Studies starts on Monday

The Seventeenth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (ICES) opens in Addis Ababa on Monday, 2^nd November. It is the Golden Jubilee of the ICES – the first conference was held in Rome in 1959 when a mere thirty three scholars presented papers. Since then conferences have been held in countries all round the world, including the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Russia, the United States, Israel, Japan and Norway. Ethiopia previously hosted the third, eighth, eleventh and fourteenth meetings at Addis Ababa University. This year's conference is being held at the University's Akaki campus just outside Addis Ababa. Numbers of those attending now run into hundreds, a majority of them Ethiopians. The number of institutions involved, the areas studied, and the involvement of different disciplines have shown equal growth. The conference is now the main regular meeting place for Ethiopian scholarship, providing an invaluable forum for young scholars to report their progress, to meet scholars from around the world, and to network.

ICES meetings always demonstrate an impressive diversity in their scope and scholarship. At one level they are intended to provide research workers with the opportunity to take stock of developments across the whole field of Ethiopian scholarship: in the humanities, in art, literature, philosophy and religion, in history, archaeology, linguistics and philology, political science, economics, international relations, anthropology and sociology, in education, human resources, gender, the environment and development, and food and production systems. On another level, they outline the directions in which research and scholarship in Ethiopian studies are moving.

There have been parallel advances in the development of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University. Set up four years after the first ICES, it has become a major centre for research and is one of the most highly respected institutions in Africa. It has a major collection of manuscripts, an impressive microfilm library, a photographic archive, art galleries and an ethnographic museum. It has almost been too successful as it now needs new premises. The Society of Friends of the Institute has launched an initiative to build a new library which would also provide for an enlarged museum and help preserve Ethiopia's unique and impressive cultural heritage, for the people of Ethiopia and for Africa.  Foreign Minister Seyoum is scheduled to deliver the opening speech for the conference on Monday.