Elias Wondimu: Founder of Tsehai Publishers

In life, there are people doing the best they can to make a positive difference in today’s world. Among them is Elias Wondimu, the director and founder of Tsehai Publishers. In a 2005 article by reporter Anthony Miller entitled, “Ethiopian Dreams: Elias Wondimu and the Art of Bridging Continents,” Miller indicates Elias’ extraordinary efforts to share and bring his personal insight about the Ethiopian community and its government issues to life. In his home country of Ethiopia, Elias life was focused on being a writer and journalist. Everything was going smoothly until Elias became perceived as a threat to his country’s political system. In 1994, he was exiled to the United States where he resides today.

In 1998, Wondimu created Tsehai Publishers, today’s foundation for various journals and books regarding current Ethiopian issues that also provides an avenue for knowledge and communication about Africa. Miler describes Wondimu as “a gregarious and fervent conversationalist who communicates an incomparable passion for both the intellectual and political importance of his work.” Once he arrived in America and realized the gap in knowledge about his country and the circulated misinformation surrounding it, Wondimu felt a need to rectify the historical fallacies, spread the truth about Africa and Ethiopia, and keep the spirit of the Ethiopian community alive. Over the years, Wondimu has published many books, both new and long-out of print, with marvelous success. In the coming years, Wondimu strives to continue to share information about Africa with others while inspiring them to help change the world.

As challenging as Wondimu’s life may seem to others, he has never given up.  He hopes that by sharing his insight, others can see how setting a good example for the rest of the Ethiopian nation can reap a positive difference. As Wendy Belcher, a writer, UCLA lecturer and scholar who grew up in Ethiopia and serves on the editorial board of IJES (a journal Wondimu publishes through his company), says in Miller’s article: “Elias is doing something unusual and important. There are very few publishers from the African continent, and, in the U.S., there are [only] a handful which are run by Africans and are publishing African texts. For an Ethiopian to have a press is more appropriate than almost any other nationality. They’ve had a written language going back 3,000 years and have long been in the business of printing and preserving the written word. He’s in a long, honorable line.” 

To read more about Elias Wondimu and his journey from Ethiopia to America, read the rest of the story here. 

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David Coles-Perez is an intern at Tsehai Publishers and can be reached at dcoles1@lion.lmu.edu

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