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India and Ethiopia have long historic relations, especially concerning trade. However, an important area of exchange and cooperation between the two countries which is essential and formative for the image of Indians in Ethiopia is India's prominence in Ethiopia's education sector. During the era of Haile Selassie no Ethiopian who visited Secondary School would graduate without being taught by Indian teachers, while today no university student will finalize his higher education without having had lecturers from India. Indian university lecturers have been in Ethiopia since the turn of the millennium when the country's university boom started. They are attracted above all by the expatriate salary Ethiopia offers and the low application barriers. Several Indian agencies have already specialized on the recruitment for Ethiopian universities. As of the high safety in Ethiopia, also female academics from India increasingly find their way to Ethiopia.
Keywords: Ethiopia; India; migration; higher education; gender
Introduction
While under the socialist Derg (Ge'ez term meaning 'committee') Regime before 1991 most Indians had leftEthiopia,1 currently, Ethiopia's Indian community is rapidly growing. The Ethiopian economy develops at a rapid pace and attracts many foreign investors and business men. But also Ethiopia's ambitious university boom and the high demand in foreign academics attract many Indian nationals.
India is a major player in international migration and a source country for highly skilled workers for many countries (Sharma 2011, 99). While so far research has been carried out above all on the migration of skilled workers from Asia to North America and Europe, Africa as a destination for academics is an alternative which evolved about two decades ago and still has to be comprehensively investigated. Based on qualitative research2 at Dire Dawa, Haramaya and Jigjiga Universities - where at the time of the field research about 100 Indian academics were employed - the paper wants to take a closer look at the migration of highly skilled people from India to Ethiopia and at the gender divide of this specific community.
Ethiopia's university boom
Higher education in Ethiopia was established in 1950 under the rule of Haile Selassie with the foundation of the first university in Addis Ababa. In the following years also few specialized colleges were started (Saint 2004, 84; Tesfaye and Ayalew 2008, 160f). Under...