Kuma Demeksa (; born 1958) is an Ethiopian politician. Since 24 April 2015, he has been an Ethiopian ambassador to

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. From 2008 to 2013 he was mayor of

Addis Ababa Addis Ababa (; ,) is the capital city of Ethiopia, as well as the regional state of Oromia. With an estimated population of 2,739,551 inhabitants as of the 2007 census, it is the largest city in the country and the List of cities in Africa b ...

; previous positions include President of the

Oromia Region Oromia (, ) is a Regions of Ethiopia, regional state in Ethiopia and the homeland of the Oromo people. Under Article 49 of 1995 Constitution of Ethiopia, Ethiopian Constitution, the capital of Oromia is Addis Ababa, also called Finfinne. The ...

(1995–2001), and Minister of Defense (2005–2008). He was one of the founders, as well as a current member, of the Oromo Peoples' Democratic Organization (OPDO), which is part of the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

Early life

Kuma was born in Gore with the name "Taye Teklemariam", a town in the Illubabor Zone, the oldest of three children. His father is Wodajo Tokon, a priest, who took the name Teklemariam after baptism; his mother is Muluye. He attended the Menelik II Primary School in Bore, despite a daily walk of 12 kilometers to and from school; he attended Haileselassie I Senior Secondary School up to the tenth grade, when the

Red Terror The Red Terror () was a campaign of political repression and Mass killing, executions in Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police ...

closed his school. He then joined the army and was sent to the Jimma Police Training Camp in 1976. Not much is known about his years in the military, and his family had assumed he was dead when he returned to Gore in 1991 with his first wife and their daughter. Other sources claim that he spent several years as a prisoner of war in the Eritrean war, and languished in the Eritrean People's Liberation Front’s jails in Nakfa. In circumstances that remain murky, Kuma and several other prisoners were released from Eritrean imprisonment to join the Ethiopian Peoples Democratic Movement (which later joined the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) to form the ERDPF) and fight against the Derg in the

Ethiopian Civil War The Ethiopian Civil War was a civil war in Ethiopia and present-day Eritrea, fought between the Ethiopian military junta known as the Derg and Ethiopian-Eritrean anti-government rebels from 12 September 1974 to 28 May 1991. The Derg overthre ...

.Taye, after given a name "Kuma" became an ethnic Oromo and joined (found) OPDO.

Political career

Following the fall of the Derg in 1991, Kuma was appointed as the Minister of Internal Affairs, the security agency of the Transitional Government of Ethiopia, which was dissolved four years later with the founding of the Federal Republic, at which time Kuma Demeska became President of Oromia. However, on 24 July 2001 he was replaced as President of Oromia by Junedin Sado, as well as expelled from the Central Committee. This was part of the fallout of an internal split within the TPLF, senior partner in the ERDPF alliance, which left Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Sebhat Nega and Arkebe Oqubay on the one side, and Tewolde Wolde Mariam, Siye Abraha and Gebru Asrat on the other. Kuma was remembered as acting as a peacemaker between the two factions. Despite this setback, he was reappointed the Central Committee of the OPDO in 2003, and was also appointed as one of the three state ministers for

Capacity Building Capacity building (or capacity development, capacity strengthening) is the improvement in an individual's or organization's facility (or capability) "to produce, perform or deploy". The terms capacity building and capacity development have often ...

.Kuma Demeksa
Retrieved 19 March 2012.

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Demeksa, Kuma 1958 births Living people Mayors of Addis Ababa Presidents of Oromia People from Oromia Oromo Democratic Party politicians Ambassadors of Ethiopia to Germany Defence ministers of Ethiopia 20th-century Ethiopian politicians 21st-century Ethiopian politicians