Poverty is an important issue for third world Sub-Saharan African countries such as Ethiopia. To assist with poverty alleviation, a great number of nongovernmental organizations have moved resources into the region, but the problem has not significantly improved. This paper studies the Jerusalem Children and Community Development Organization (JeCCDO), an NGO that has engaged in poverty alleviation programs in Ethiopia for more than 35 years. The study examines communication practices used by JeCCDO as part of its poverty alleviation programs in Negede Woito community (Bahir Dar, Ethiopia). We use a qualitative research methodology to assess the organization's communication practices, as well as the challenges it and the Negede Woito community face. Poverty is perceived as lack of resources by JeCCDO, but the community also prioritizes other forms of poverty such as psychological and cultural. Our findings reveal that JeCCDO is renowned for using a social enterprise development model and a participatory communication approach. However, in practice we find these are not used. In the models, endogenous knowledge and grassroots communication were vital to community development, but JeCCDO did not implement them during planning, implementing, and evaluating community-based programs. Community workers who coordinated the organization and the community were Negede Woito community members. Besides grassroots communication, knowing the context and living situation of the community is mandatory for development agents. JeCCDO did not contextualize development efforts, such as sheep fattening and poultry for people who did not have shelter. In conclusion, we propose that nongovernmental organizations and development workers should reconsider their communication contexts and practices while launching new poverty alleviation programs.

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This study explores patterns in the portrayal of development issues in the religious media from 1993 to 2021, in an attempt to illustrate the existence of hierarchical representations of development issues using sources, actors, and dominant frames. To this end, we use a quantitative method that considers the development content of two Ethiopian religious magazines: Hamer and Hintset. Our results reveal that across the selected years, the two magazines together presented 685 articles on development (359 the Hamer and 326 in Hintset). We employ data analysis using SPSS software, in which both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were utilized for data presentation. We determine that political, economic, and natural resource development issues are the most scarcely covered issues as compared to social, moral, peace themes. Economic (chi-square = 5.122, p = 0.024, and p < 0.05), social development issues (chi-square = 6.207, p = 0.018, and p < 0.05) have a relationship with the year of publication in Hintset. Adherents, believers at the grassroots level, were the most frequent sources and story actors in the magazines. This shows participatory development communication was employed in the mediatization of development issues. The frame of development issues did not have a relationship with the year of publication. Finally, Hamer and Hintset included significant coverage of development issues, although development priorities are different. Hamer covered more social development issues whereas Hintset covered more moral development issues. In summary, our findings reveal that the religious media’s representation of development (685 articles, 38.8%) is at a high level in Ethiopia. We, therefore, suggest that local and global development agencies should work with faith-based media as development partners.

The purpose of this study was to assess whether or not students and teachers were having positive attitude towards the practice of content based language instruction and to see the actual practice of it in TVET poly technic colleges. It was particularly meant to investigate students’ attitude towards the usefulness of the course, course contents, assessment and teacher’s competence. Teacher’s attitude towards the course and challenges of it if occurs were investigated. Moreover, the study was targeted to investigating the actual practice of teaching in three areas: students’ participation, teachers’ language skills and teachers’ skill in using instructional materials. The study was conducted in one Polytechnic College of Amhara Region. Generally, from the total number of 2909 trainees in four different levels; second year Level Three and Level Four trainees were purposefully selected. From the selected six departments (639 trainees), 185 were randomly selected. Regarding CBL teachers, no sample selection were needed for their number was small and easily manageable. So, the participant of the study were 6 teachers and 185 students in the college. The data were collected through questionnaire, observation and interview and the results were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The result of the study revealed that students and teachers showed positive attitude towards the usefulness of CBL courses, course contents and course assessment. However, students had negative attitude towards teachers’ competence. And teachers’ actual practice revealed that teachers did not properly apply content based language instruction to bring the desired result. The study also indicated that  there were problems for its implementation due to teachers’ lack of language skills and training. The combined responses of the participants (students and teachers) revealed that the students didn’t get benefit and this impact developed because of teachers’ incompetence to implement content based language instruction. Finally, it was concluded that CBLI was not implemented as it is desired. Therefore, concerned bodies should take various measures to ameliorate the challenges.

This research examines the agenda and frames used by the Reporter newspaper editorial coverage of issues and actors before and after the reform in Ethiopia. The study applies a quantitative content analysis method and examined 99 (Period 1 = 57 and Period 2 = 42) editorials in all periods. The source of data and the period of data collection were purposely selected. The results indicated that societal issues, government, and party issues were frequent in both periods. The professional journalist was the only Author in both periods. More government criticism and more reforms were mentioned before the reform. Compared with editorials published before and after the reform, noticeable changes were observed in government critique, attribution of responsibility frames, human interest frames and economic issue frames. However, content selection, sources of information, mentioned reforms, conflict relationship frames, and ideological frames didn’t have relationship with the date of publication. Finally, the Reporter editorials coverage did change significantly in many respects, although it is difficult to determine the causes of the changes—economic factors, reduced political control, social changes or globalization forces.