Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa University was founded in 1950 at the request of Haile Selassie by a Canadian Jesuit, Dr Lucien Matte, S.J. as a two-year college, and began operations the next year. Over the following two years an affiliation with the University of London was developed. The university maintains branches in many cities throughout Ethiopia, leading to the claim of being "the largest university in Africa." The university offered its first master's programs in 1979 and its first PhD programs in 1987. The writer and theorist Richard Cummings served as a member of the Faculty of Law of the Addis Ababa University.