Book Aid International (BAI) has re-drawn Ethiopia’s book-logistics map.
Book Aid International (BAI) has re-drawn Ethiopia’s book-logistics map. From 2026–28, Hawassa University (HU) takes over as Direct National Consignee, replacing the British Council after a decade of pretty much flawless stewardship. The university will clear, store and despatch every donated title – around 100k new books a year – to universities, schools, public, prison and community libraries nationwide.
Why publishers should care
Single, university-run gateway: one invoice, one customs clearance, zero duty.
Data-led provenance: HU and local NGO EKTTS will share quarterly impact dashboards (loans, reading-club uptake, stock turnover) giving rights teams real-world usage metrics.
Print stays king: rural broadband sits below 20 % (nationally, about 29% poenetration), so physical books remain the primary learning format. Your backlist has extended shelf-life.
From regional pilot to national hub
Since 2020, HU has been BAI’s sole higher-ed partner, funnelling 50k books into 200+ Sidama sites. The outreach model – run by librarian Mulugeta Woldetsadik – cut student textbook ratios from 1:5 to 1:2 in pilot colleges. Scaling the same template nationwide promises similar gains for 36 public universities and 1,200 secondary schools.
Sustainability baked in
HU’s legal mandate secures duty-free import; its institutional budget underwrites warehousing; EKTTS handles “last-mile” delivery to 11 regional hubs. No external warehousing fees, no forex risk – cost per book delivered falls by an estimated 28 % compared with the previous triennium.
The journey
January 2026: Alison Tweed, BAI CEO, visited Addis to formalise hand-over and host a publisher round-table on inclusive-content needs.
March 2026: first consolidated shipment (60 pallets; 30k books) lands at Djibouti port; HU targets 60-day inland turnaround.
Ongoing: call for tertiary-level STEM, vocational and indigenous-language titles; publishers can pledge stock via BAI’s London warehouse.
The View From The Beach
For rights, sales and CSR managers, the new consignee structure offers a friction-free conduit into Ethiopia’s fastest-growing education market, plus verifiable impact data to satisfy ESG audits.
Hawassa University is open to co-publishing, low-cost reprint licensing and reading-programme sponsorship – opportunities worth cataloguing now.
But don’t write off digital just yet. Almost 30 million Ethiopians are online – many more than the entire population of some European countries that have advanced digital books economies – and that number will rise as this decade unfolds.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.
