Open Knowledge Ethiopia is a local group, under the Open Knowledge Foundation, which is established to work on open government data and open science. The group has run various workshops and training events on open data and open science subjects in collaboration with Addis Ababa University (AAU), attracting participants from academia, CSOs, and policymakers.

OK Ethiopia, with support of Link Digital, have now hired three CKAN contributors who are working on a full-time basis, primarily, for the CKAN project. AAU has been very supportive of the group, providing a venue for training and workshops free of any cost. They have also agreed to provide an office space for OK Ethiopia.

News about the second hire into the CKAN Contributor team was referenced in the post by Ruth Bekele, “My First 100 Days as a CKAN Contributor“.

The most recent development regarding funding has been that NSW Government approved a request from Link Digital to contribute a further $10,000 ex GST into this initiative via a contract addition to data.nsw.gov.au, allowing for a third CKAN contributor to be added to the team.

At this time, we have a very excited group of ICT Graduates working on the CKAN project under the leadership of Solomon Mekkonen. Ruth Bekele, who started in November 2018, is currently attending the Open Government Partnership Summit along with Link Digital’s Executive Director, Steven De Costa. Both are there to support the CKAN Association and promote opportunities for Governments to further support CKAN’s continuous development as the Open Government Data platform of choice.

You Can Support OK Ethiopia and the CKAN Project Too.

If you would like to know more about opportunities to support the CKAN project via this initiative, please get in touch to learn more.

The OK Ethiopia Team

Solomon Mekonnen

Solomon Mekonnen is an Academic Staff with the rank of Assistant Professor and Open Access Coordinator at the Addis Ababa University (AAU). Apart from his role at AAU, In addition, Solomon coordinates nationally Open Access Programme of an international network called Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) representing Consortium of Ethiopian Academic and Research Libraries. He is also a local organizer in Ethiopia for an international network called Open Knowledge. As part of his role as local organizer, he coordinates the Open Knowledge community in Ethiopia focusing on open data and open science. Solomon has participated in a number of projects related to open data and open access at the national and institutional level including a project on opening and visualizing Ethiopian election 2015 data, , Ethiopian Journals online ( as Project Manager), National Digital Repository (NDR). Solomon has graduated with MSc. in Information Science from AAU and completed his PhD in Information from the University of South Africa.

Ruth Bekele

Ruth Bekele was the first full-time CKAN  contributor hired in Ethiopia, currently working as a contributor. Before devoting her work full time to CKAN Ruth was a full-time teacher at Akaki Adventist Academy and was working part time at school of language and basic computer skills. Ruth studied her elementary, high school and preparatory at Ethiopia Adventist College and she used to volunteer in summer training given in the school. Graduated her BSc in Computer science from the University of Gondar. She is highly motivated to learn new things.

Ruth’s Role is 100% funded by Link Digital donations to OK Ethiopia

Nehemiah Amanuel

Nehemiah has worked in Ethiopian AI pioneer iCog before and after graduation from Addis Ababa University with BSc in information system. Nehemiah has worked on two different project of which one was an android tablet application and the other flask web app. Nehemyiah is currently working as fulltime CKAN developer for Open Knowledge Ethiopia.

Nehemiah’s Role is 100% funded by this GoFundMe campaign. Any shortfall in campaign funds are covered by donations from Link Digital

Bati Taye

Bati studied BSc in Computer Science at Jigjiga University and he is in a graduate class of MSc in computer science specializing in cybersecurity. Baty worked as a Junior IT expert at Hawasa Industrial park in Ethiopia. He is currently working as CKAN contributor for Open Knowledge Ethiopia.

Bati’s Role is 100% funded by NSW Government in Australia, who recognise the value of giving back into open source projects where their own programs rely on such open source projects. Several NSW Government data portals are based on CKAN, including most of the portals listed at
https://data.nsw.gov.au/data-portals