In Depth:  Ethiopia

Luke Randall

A new publishing house is giving evangelical leaders hope for the future in Ethiopia. The initiative is supported by representatives from a wide variety of denominations and has seen new Christian material published by local writers.

The Onesimus publishing house was the first serious venture of its kind in Ethiopia, according to the Langham Partnership who supported the project. There is much hope among local scholars that the initiative will lead to better education and training for Ethiopia’s church leaders, as although 18% of the national population of over 129 million is believed to be evangelical, around 90% of its pastors are believed to lack formal training for ministry in the absence of quality material.

letter from Ethiopia

Historically, the Anglican presence in Ethiopia has been tiny, with over half the country’s 110million people owing allegiance to the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Church, while a significant but growing Protestant minority belong overwhelmingly to Pentecostal and Evangelical churches.

But there is a different story in Gambella, a town and region in the westernmost part of Ethiopia bordering South Sudan which I was privileged to visit recently. Here, there are some 150,000 Anglicans, predominantly ethnically Sudanese Ethiopians whose numbers have been swollen in recent years by South Sudanese refugees. The strength of this church has been recognised by the formation of the Diocese of Gambella as one of the four constituent dioceses of the new Anglican Province of Alexandria launched in October 2021.