Girma Wolde-Giorgis - Background

Background

Girma was born in December 1924 in Addis Ababa. He first attended an Ethiopian Orthodox Church school and later joined the Teferi Mekonnen School in Addis Ababa where he followed his education until the Italian invasion. The school was then renamed "Scuola Principe di Piemonte" (Prince of Piedmonte School) for the Crown Prince of Italy, in Addis Ababa.

Between 1950 and 1952, he received certificates in Management (from Holland), in Air Traffic Management (in Sweden) and Air Traffic Control (in Canada) under a training programme sponsored by the International Civil Aviation Organization. He was one of the first Ethiopians in the Ethiopian airforce dominated by American technicians. Girma tried to motivate Ethiopians to join the airlines and wrote a book on fundamentals. He was an activist and in the Inter Parliamentary Summit in Yugoslavia, he condemned the apartheid system in South Africa. Wolde-Giorgis speaks many languages fluently. They are: Afan Oromo (Oromiffa), Amharic, Tigrinya, Italian, English, and French.

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