Kaleb Tedla

Who was Kaleb Tedla?

Kaleb Tedla was a successful Eritrean business man who lived most of his life in Ethiopia. He was born in a former region of Serayie, Eritrea, from a top-ranking military Askari at the end of World War I. Kaleb grew up in his early childhood in Gaza Kenisha, by then an upscale place for local Eritreans.

As young men, Kaleb and his eldest brother, Iyasu, went to a colonial boarding school directly administrated by the then imperial fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. Kaleb and some Eritreans who despised the Italians fled down south to Ethiopia.

Following the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935, Kaleb's friends opted to stay at the newly conquered colonial capital Addis Ababa; Kaleb himself, however, continued his voyage to the southwestern newly Italian-designed city of Jimma in early 1939, employed under the monarchial house of the town’s king Aba Jifar's family.

Lauded for his ability as one of the most skilled auto mechanics of his age, he is well-remembered as one of the gifted business-minded maestros. Despite the political pressure by the then-Ethiopian imperial regime on native Eritreans, he found himself one of the well-known tycoons in Ethiopia.