Moges Kebede

Who is Moges Kebede?

Moges Kebede, sometimes credited as Moges Kebede Damte or Moges Damte, is an Ethiopian author, essayist, and editor. He is the publisher of Mestawet Ethiopian Newspaper, a monthly magazine for the Ethiopian immigrant community in the United States.

Moges Kebede was born and raised in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. After finishing high school, he worked as a freelance writer, contributing articles for various private newspapers and magazines and writing plays for local theaters.

The early 1990s was a burgeoning period in the history of Ethiopian writing and journalism. The military junta led by Mengistu Haile Mariam collapsed and was overthrown by a rebel group, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, which later evolved into the coalition Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front that formed the transitional government.

This transition period, with its absence of governmental interference, effectively ended the almost two-decade-old ban of private media and publications. This created an opportunity for many to actively write and participate in the country's newfound free speech movement. But just a few years later, the government would eventually start to curtail some of the freedom-of-press rights which it had initially allowed to mushroom.