Sahle-Work Zewde

Sahle-Work Zewde (born 21 February 1950) is an Ethiopian politician and diplomat. She is the 5th and current President of Ethiopia since 25 October 2018.

Sahle-Work Zewde in 2016

Quotes

• In so many areas — agriculture, transport, energy, the water sector, multisector — the support we have been getting for years from the African Development Bank, up to more than one billion dollars, has been very vital for Ethiopia.
  • Sahle-Work Zewde (2021) cited in: "Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde and African Development Bank chief Akinwumi Adesina discuss Ethiopia’s development priorities" in African Development Bank Group, 16 December 2021.
• Let me assure you that I will do my best not only as an Ethiopian but as an African in my heart and soul; so that we can show the world that women can also deliver, maybe differently, but deliver.[1]
• Despite many obstacles facing young people, they are always hopeful and optimistic that they will be able to enter the job market and make significant contributions to their society; and they are placing increasing importance in creating their own opportunities and becoming entrepreneurs, including in growing areas, such as green technologies.[2]
• I dream of an Ethiopia, of an Africa that is free of hunger, a world where no mother should bury their child because of hunger or worst still because no one cares.[3]
• The absence of peace victimizes firstly women, so during my tenure, I will emphasize women’s roles in ensuring peace and the dividends of peace for women.[4]
• I recognize that no society or political order is perfect but we have the duty and obligation to ensure that we are moving toward a less imperfect political order to a more perfect order for all citizens.[5]
• Child hunger is a moral challenge to us all. As a citizen, I find that hunger is not just a moral issue but it is also a political issue in the larger sense of the word[6]
• As you are best placed to know, young people are rarely consulted in meaningful ways during the creation of strategies. Nor are they identified as a major group experiencing unemployment and poverty. Few of the action plans link youth-focused strategies to specific targets and budget outlays or regard the youth situation as a major cross-cutting issue.[7]
• If the history of Africa was written by Africans and by women, I think we would find many unsung heroes.[8]
• Government and opposition parties have to understand we are living in a common house and focus on things that unite us, not what divides us, to create a country and generation that will make all of us proud[9]
• For the mother who sees her child die because of lack of food, the economy of resource scarcity is irrelevant and the politics of public policy does not matter; they do not help a grieving mother, she has lost her child because there is no food, worst still, because no one cares.[10]
• “I grew up in a family of four girls. I’m the firstborn. But I had a very amazing family especially my father, who has always told us that there is nothing that a woman or a girl cannot do. So this has been my motto all my life and in whatever I did, by the way, I was the first woman to do this, the first woman to do that, so I was daring.”[11]