In July 2020, the ILBF was able to ship 51 boxes containing 404 excellent legal texts to Hawassa University and Dilla University in Ethiopia, thanks to a generous donation from Thomson Reuters. Despite the constraints of Covid-19, the Thomson Reuters warehouse team put in a huge effort to make sure the books were packed and ready to be shipped via a sea route that has not been available to the ILBF for a few years. We are now extremely happy to announce that the books have arrived, been catalogued and are patiently waiting on the Universities’ law libraries shelves to be used by students.

The complete shipment was sent to Mulugeta Woldetsadik, Librarian at Hawassa University. Mulugeta very kindly agreed to be the consignee for both Hawassa University and Dilla University, which meant that he managed the entire clearance process. Once the books reached Addis Ababa, Ethiopia by sea freight, Mulugeta used Hawassa University’s truck to personally collect them and drive them to the University – a round trip which took about 10 hours by road.

The ILBF books finally reached Hawassa University in December 2020. After the arrival of the books, senior officials of Hawassa University, Dr. Eng. Fisiiha Getachew, Vice President for Academic Affairs of Hawassa University and Dr. Deberework Debebe, Dean of College of Law & Governance, Hawassa University passed on their acknowledgements and thanks to the ILBF.

‘This is to gratefully acknowledge the receipt of books donated by the ILBF to Hawassa University. We believe that these books will significantly enrich our library books collections and benefit our students, academic staff and researchers immensely.’

Dr. Eng. Fisiiha Getachew, Vice-President for Academic Affairs, Hawassa University

‘We received all the books and we aremaking it ready to avail in our library to students, for its part College of Law & Governance expressed its delight at the donated books and expressed its sincere appreciation to the organization behind the donation ILBF which is the first organization to make such donation to College of Law & Governance, Hawassa University, particularly to Katrina Crossley (CEO of ILBF), and all ILBF staff.’

Dr. Deberework Debebe, Dean of College of Law & Governance, Hawassa University

Mulugeta Woldetsadik played a vital role in the success of the donation, for both Hawassa University and as an intermediary for Dilla University. He has reflected on his international professional networking experience in his Professional Blog:

‘Consequently, I have been connected & communicated with International Law Book Facility (ILBF) on the web particularly with Katrina Crossley, ILBF CEO on her Twitter, and create & build a healthy network of professional work partnership between ILBF & Hawassa University. What makes different this ILBF Law Books Donation is that both Katrina & I were operating the facilitation process at the time of lockdown via Twitter and email from our home.’

Mulugeta Woldetsasik, Librarian, Hawassa University

‘I am very pleased for the law books donation from International Law Books Facility. I hereby approved that the donated books are technical processed & added to our library Online Public Access Catalogue/OPAC/ in order to give service to our students, thanks once again to ILBF.’

Behailu Eshetu, Head of School of Law, Hawassa University

Students at Dilla University received their donations in April 2021, after Tolosa Bedada, Dean at the College of Law and Governance and lecturer in law, was able to collect them from Hawassa. 

The ILBF is very fortunate to be able to assist two Universities in one shipment, as this considerably reduces the costs and administrative burden for everyone. We hope to make a further shipment to Ethiopia over the next few months to provide additional legal resources in support of law students and academics.

Finally, the ILBF relies heavily on the collaboration of all our partners, both in the UK and overseas, and we are particularly grateful to Mulugeta for his assistance with this shipment. Having expert help to manage the goods clearance process once the books reach their destination is invaluable!

If you’d like to find out more about how these shipments were prepared during a worldwide pandemic and the incredible help the ILBF received from Thomson Reuters, see our article on Shipments in the time of Covid-19.