Connecting Addis through Oral History: Storytelling from Elders "ማን ያውጋ የነበረ ማን ያርዳ የቀበረ"

We are pleased to announce the launch of the 13 Months of Storytelling: Addis Ababa Elders’ Oral History Project, a collaborative pilot initiative dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of oral histories. Conceived by Dr. Netsanet Gebremichael at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, and implemented in partnership with the Goethe-Institut in Addis Ababa, the Addis Neighbourhood Elders Oral History (ANEO) Project seeks to establish a sustainable oral history archive that captures and preserves the lived experiences of Addis Ababa’s elders. 

The project aims to document, reconstruct, and safeguard the rich cultural heritage of Addis Ababa’s historic neighborhoods through the voices and memories of those who have witnessed the city’s transformation across generations. As Addis Ababa has grown and evolved over more than 140 years, the memories of its senior residents provide invaluable insights into the social, cultural, and historical development of the city. While the voices of the founding generation have largely faded with time, the recollections of today’s elders offer a unique opportunity to access and preserve the earliest living memories of the capital. 

By engaging with elders as custodians of collective memory and living repositories of cultural heritage, the project seeks to preserve their personal narratives as an integral component of the city’s historical record. The initiative focuses on documenting, archiving, and preserving embodied memories that have evolved alongside Addis Ababa over several decades. Through systematic oral history collection, the project records how residents aged 70 years and above understand and narrate their experiences of urban life, social change, and community belonging. 

The ANEO Project seeks to capture the city's sensory and cultural landscapes, including its visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, and culinary dimensions. By centering the experiences of elders who have lived in their neighbourhoods for more than two decades, the project generates a valuable repository of intergenerational knowledge that reflects Addis Ababa as a place of residence, work, identity, and cultural formation. 

This initiative responds to the growing need to bridge the gap between documentation and preservation. It calls upon researchers, artists, archivists, collectors, and engaged citizens to contribute to the protection of places, practices, and memories that constitute the city’s social and cultural heritage. Through oral history methodologies and collaborative knowledge production, the project aims to create a lasting cultural memory archive that documents and preserves the social and cultural history of Addis Ababa over the past seven to eight decades. 

To achieve these objectives, the pilot phase comprises four interconnected components: oral history training workshops, public lectures, monthly seminars and film screening, scheduled between 23 July and 21 October. The programme commenced with an intensive oral history methodology workshop involving selected trainees and will subsequently expand through a series of public lectures and knowledge-sharing events designed to engage broader academic and community audiences. 


* 8 October 2026 | Public Lecture | 05:30pm at Goethe-Institut ÄthiopienOrality and Ethiopian Histories: Reflections of a Professional Historian by Dr. Tekalign Woldemariam.

* 12 October 2026 | Workshop (Closed Event)
Doing Oral History: Interviewing, Documenting, Archiving, and Preserving by Dr. Linde Apel

*13 October 2026 | Public Lecture | 03:00pm-05:00pm at Institute of Ethiopian Studies Reflecting Oral History: History, Methodology, and Current Digital Challenges by Dr. Linde Apel