Zenebeworke Tadesse is an Ethiopian development specialist with degrees in Sociology and International Relations from Binghamton University, USA. Her area of specialization covers gender relations, governance, rural development and research on poverty. She is a founding member and first Executive Secretary of the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD). She is also a member of the executive board of both the African Gender Institute, based in the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and the Africa Governance Institute, based in Dakar, Senegal. Tadesse was the Deputy Executive Secretary of CODESRIA and head of its Publications Programme (1987–1993) and the first woman President of CODESRIA’s Executive Committee (2002–2005).
She has worked extensively on gender issues and social politics in Africa with various organisations in the UN system, as well as with other development groups and NGOs. Zenebeworke Tadesse was Director of Global Fund for Women, Director of Learning Partenrship for Women, and also a member of the Executive Committee of United Nation’s Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). She presently serves as a member and editor of the Management Committee of the Forum for Social Studies, based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Among her publications are The Condition of Women in Ethiopia (SIDA, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1975); Kevina Ethiopia (Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, 1977); Children in Zambia (with Catherine Mwanamamba, SIDA, Stockholm, 1979); Women and Rural Development in Africa: An Overview (ILO/WFP Working Paper Series, Geneva, Switzerland, 1984); Women’s Land Right in Ethiopia (1998); Issues in Rural Development (Proceedings of the Inaugural Workshop of the Forum for Social Studies, 2000), Gender and Economic Policy (Forum for Social Studies, 2003) and Revisiting Customary Institutions and Gender Relations: A Daunting Challenge (FAO Gender and Land Compendium of Country Studies, 2005).
Zenebeworke Tadesse is a member of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences.
