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The Italian occupation (1936–1941) violently interrupted this journalistic experiment. The fascist authorities suppressed Addis Lisan and replaced it with their own propaganda organs, erasing Ethiopian voices from the public sphere. Consequently, when Haile Selassie returned from exile in 1941, the revival of Addis Lisan was a potent act of symbolic restoration. It signaled not only the return of the legitimate government but also the resumption of the modernization project. Yet, the post-war era was different. The newspaper now faced competition from a more diverse and often more independent private press, such as the Ethiopian Herald (in English) and Berhanena Selam . Nevertheless, Addis Lisan retained its unique authority as the official record of the Crown, a role it maintained through the tumultuous 1950s and 1960s, even as its language grew increasingly formulaic and its tone more defensive in the face of emerging opposition from student movements and labor unions.

Content-wise, Addis Lisan performed three crucial functions. First, it acted as a legal gazette. By publishing new laws, tax codes, and administrative directives, the newspaper sought to standardize governance across a patchwork of provinces often ruled by semi-autonomous regional lords ( mekwannint ). The very act of printing a law in Addis Lisan was a claim to rational, bureaucratic authority over custom and feudal privilege. Second, the newspaper served as a pedagogical tool. It published articles on hygiene, modern agriculture, and geography, implicitly defining what it meant to be a modern Ethiopian subject. Third, and most significantly, Addis Lisan was a vehicle for diplomatic narrative. During the Italo-Ethiopian crisis of the 1930s, the newspaper tirelessly presented Ethiopia’s case to the small, literate elite, framing the impending war as a clash between Christian civilization and fascist aggression, and between legitimate sovereignty and colonial greed. addis lisan newspaper

The birth of Addis Lisan must be understood within the context of Ethiopia’s unique trajectory. Unlike the rest of Africa, Ethiopia remained uncolonized, preserving its ancient institutions while selectively adopting modern technologies. Following his rise to power as Regent and then as Emperor, Haile Selassie (then known as Tafari Makonnen) recognized that traditional methods of proclamation—the imperial decree read by town criers—were insufficient for the complex administrative and diplomatic challenges of the post-World War I era. The first known issue of Addis Lisan appeared around 1928, during a period of intense reform. The newspaper’s name itself was a programmatic statement: it aimed to create a "new language" of politics, law, and international relations for a nation seeking admission to the League of Nations. Its primary content—official government bulletins, legal notices, court proceedings, and chronicles of the Emperor’s activities—established it as the semi-official chronicle of the Solomonic Dynasty’s modernizing agenda. It signaled not only the return of the

However, to view Addis Lisan solely as a tool of top-down propaganda would be reductive. It also inadvertently became a space for the nascent Ethiopian intelligentsia to engage with ideas of progress, duty, and identity. The newspaper’s pages, while tightly controlled, offered opportunities for educated Ethiopians—graduates of the new Tafari Makonnen School or returnees from abroad—to debate issues such as the abolition of slavery, the role of foreign advisors, and the need for administrative reform. This created a dynamic tension: the Emperor used the newspaper to consolidate his power, but the very discourse of modernity he promoted encouraged a generation of thinkers who would eventually critique the absolutism of the very system Addis Lisan celebrated. The "new language" was thus a double-edged sword, fostering loyalty to the throne while also planting the seeds of future political critique. Nevertheless, Addis Lisan retained its unique authority as

In the annals of Ethiopian history, the printed word has often served as both a weapon of statecraft and a mirror of modernity. While the ancient stele of Axum and the royal chronicles of Gondar spoke to a select few, the advent of the newspaper in the 20th century sought to address a newly emerging public. Among the most significant of these early journalistic endeavors was Addis Lisan (Amharic: አዲስ ልሳን, "New Language" or "New Tongue"). Published from the late 1920s, Addis Lisan was more than a mere collection of news; it was a critical instrument in Emperor Haile Selassie’s broader project of centralized governance, national identity formation, and the intellectual preparation of Ethiopia for its precarious place in the 20th-century world order. This essay argues that Addis Lisan served as the official, yet intellectually vibrant, voice of the Ethiopian monarchy, navigating the tension between tradition and reform while attempting to forge a cohesive national consciousness from the country’s diverse feudal realities.

In conclusion, the history of Addis Lisan is inseparable from the history of modern Ethiopia under Haile Selassie. It was the bureaucratic heartbeat of an empire striving for sovereignty and internal cohesion. While never a free press in the Western liberal sense, it was a foundational institution that introduced the very concept of a public, national discourse to a diverse and largely illiterate population. It translated the abstract authority of the state into the concrete language of daily decrees and news items. By giving voice to the "new language" of reform and resistance—first against internal feudal fragmentation, then against Italian fascism— Addis Lisan helped narrate Ethiopia into the modern world. Its legacy is a reminder that in non-Western contexts, the history of journalism is not simply a story of watchdogging power, but often a complex tale of how power itself learned to speak to, and in the process, inadvertently create, a public that would one day learn to speak back.