Background
Akilu Habte-Wold was born on March 12, 1912, into a humble Amhara family, the son of a priest in the Ethiopian Coptic Church.
Akilu Habte-Wold was born on March 12, 1912, into a humble Amhara family, the son of a priest in the Ethiopian Coptic Church.
Educated at the French Lycee in Alexandria and the Sorbonne University, Paris, and Ecole des Sciences Politiques, where he obtained arts degrees.
An early job for government was as secretary and charge d’affaires at the Ethiopian legation in Paris, where he stayed between 1936 and 1940 while his country was under Italian occupation, acting as the Emperor’s representative. After the liberation in 1941, he joined the Foreign Office, rising to be Vice-Minister and Foreign Minister on July 3, 1949. There he was active in the negotiations with Italy lasting seven years from 1945 to 1952 over Eritrea, which was finally reunited with Ethiopia. He played an equally important part in the United Nations, becoming the first African to be appointed vice-chairman of the UN General Assembly, at the 10th session.
During the abortive coup d’etat in December 1960 he was with the Emperor in Brazil, but his brother Makonnen liable Wold, then Minister of Commerce and Industry, was one of those killed by the rebels at the massacre in the palace. After the elections of January, he was chosen as Prime Minister on April 17, 1961, and Minister of the Pen, who acts as the Emperor's spokesman. Trusted by the Emperor, during the unsuccessful attempts in the early sixties, to democratise local government, he had his own powers extended under the March 23, 1966, decree, when the Emperor delegated to him the right to appoint cabinet ministers. In April he took advantage of this by reorganising the cabinet and appointing five new ministers.
He became involved in the dispute with Somalia, which claimed some parts of Ethiopian territory. He warned President Aden Osman of Somalia to “respect the frontiers drawn on the maps” at the 1963 session of the OAU. But, by the end of the sixties, he was working hard to improve relations with the old civilian government and the new military government of Somalia after the October 1969 coup. He visited Somalia in September 1969 on a private visit.
He supported the Emperor in his modernisation programme by helping introduce land reform and land tax bills, which were strongly resisted by Parliament. In 1969, when the Gojam province revolted against the land tax, the Planning and Development Ministry was absorbed into Habte Wold’s own office. Other ministers seeking promotion became serious political rivals in 1970-1971. He worked hard for Ethiopia’s policy which finally brought peace between the Sudanese government and the Anyana rebels on February 27, 1972.
He made his mark in the United Nations and promoted an orthodox line in the Organisation for African Unity, which he translated into practical terms by helping to bring to an end the dispute with Somalia. Subjected to increasing cabinet rivalry in the last few years, as he began his sixties, he is faced by a growing group of younger intellectuals and modernists, demanding more radical political action.
Aklilu lived in Paris and married a French woman, Collette Habte-Wold.