Ethiopian Person of the Year is an annual issue of the Ethiopian news portal
Jimma Times
''Yeroo'' was the first private Afaan Oromo newspaper published in Qubee (Oromo alphabet).Yeroo
''Yeroo'' was the first private Afaan Oromo newspaper published in Qubee (Oromo alphabet).Ethiopian calendar year.
History
Jimma Times's tradition of selecting the "Ethiopian Person of the Year" honor began during the new Ethiopian millennium (year 2000,
Western calendar
The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It was introduced in October 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years diff ...
2007/2008) when the multi-Olympic champion
Kenenisa Bekele
Kenenisa Bekele ( om, Qananiisaa baqqalaa; am, ቀነኒሳ በቀለ; born 13 June 1982) is an Ethiopian long-distance runner. He was the world record holder in both the 5000-metre and 10000-metre from 2004 (5,000m) and 2005 (10,000m) unti ...
was selected. It established the multi-language (
Afaan Oromo
Oromo ( or ; Oromo: ''Afaan Oromoo''), in the linguistic literature of the early 20th century also called Galla (a name with a pejorative meaning and therefore rejected by the Oromo people), is an Afroasiatic language that belongs to the Cushiti ...
Yeroo
''Yeroo'' was the first private Afaan Oromo newspaper published in Qubee (Oromo alphabet).Oromo language and its style was to mirror the American ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'' news magazine which also publishes its annual Person of the Year selections. ''Yeroo'' newspaper stopped publication in Ethiopia after only a few months but Jimma Times website continues to operate.
Though many other Ethiopian media outlets make their own annual selections, Jimma Times's independent selection is the only one that often features interviews of the nominees and special report articles on the work of the winner(s). The winner for the award during Ethiopian calendar year 2001 was the peace activist, founder of the first private bank Awash and leading politician Bulcha Demeksa while the CEO and founder of
Ethiopia Commodity Exchange
The Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) is a commodities exchange established April 2008 in Ethiopia. In Proclamation 2007-550, which created the ECX, its stated objective was "to ensure the development of an efficient modern trading system" that ...
Dr.
Eleni Gabre-Madhin
Eleni Zaude Gabre-Madhin (born 12 July 1964) is an Ethiopian-born Swiss economist, and former chief executive officer of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). She has had many years of experience working on agricultural markets – particularl ...