Ethiopian TV Drama: Development from Moot-Court Rudimentary Viewing to Screening Advanced Serial

It is now more than one hundred years since theatre and cinema were introduced to Ethiopia, and PhD dissertations, books, and journal articles pertinent to the arts have been published by expatriate and local academia. In the same vein, hundreds of TV dramas have been produced in Ethiopia in the last 60 years under various socio-economic and political milieus of the Imperial era, the Därg military government, and the EPRDF. Ethiopian TV drama as a subject area, nonetheless, has not attracted the attention of national and international researchers adequately so far. This article attempts to fill this gap in scholarship by illustrating the development of Ethiopian television drama that started in 1964 with the screening of a Moot-Court exercise of law students of Haile Sellasie I University, to gradually acquire a qualitative change with professional production of the serial Gämäna in 2001/2009. The study rather goes beyond this historical period highlighting the overview of the last six decades by way of depicting the legacy of the serial Gämäna as a conclusion. This study hopefully will contribute to the general comprehension of Ethiopian television drama in particular and African TV drama in general. It also commemorates the 60th anniversary of the advent of television drama in Ethiopia.