Taffara Deguefé, who died on March 6 aged 89, was a famous banker and perhaps Ethiopia’s best known figure in international financial circles. He was bank governor of the National Bank to the Emperor and Mengistu and he later worked as a banking consultant in Swaziland and Zimbabwe from 1982 to 1994. Former colleague praises Taffara for his intelligence, wit and literary acumen, and lasting pride in his roots. As an author, he proved an outstanding recorder of the Ethiopian modern century with a clear-sighted take on national and international politics. His memoir “Minutes of an Ethiopian Century” was described as a painstaking recollection of the minute details behind the great events that shock Ethiopia to the core.
His debut in public life came in 1958, when he was asked by Emperor Haile Selassie to manage the new branch of the State Bank of Ethiopia being established in Sudan. The immediate priority was to establish operations and become competitive with the objective of supporting the expansion of trade between Ethiopia and the Sudan. During his three years stay there, he took resolute, pragmatic measures that won him wide praise. The branches’ business grew rapidly, despite the competition from the other six banks already operating in the country.Until it was nationalized in 1969 by President Nemery’s regime, the branch was a good training ground for the future bank executives in Ethiopia. Taffara was awarded the Order of the Star of Ethiopia by Emperor Haile Selassie and soon promoted general manager of the State Bank, the first Ethiopian to hold that post. Only 17 years before that he had first joined the State Bank as a simple clerk.
He held the general manager post for fourteen years and he devoted his tenure to improving and broadening the branch network- “a busy time of surveying sites for new branches and relocating old one.” He actively participated in the banking reforms which culminated with the issue of the banking reform legislation of July 1963, leading to the split of the State Bank. Upon the split of the state Bank of Ethiopia into the National Bank and the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia in December 1963, Taffara was named chief executive of the CBE. During the consequent years, he established a savings and mortgage subsidiary, a transit and maritime services company and an executor subsidiary of the bank. He was also credited for playing an important role in the construction of the head office building at a cost of the then Eth. $4 million which accommodated both the national and commercial banks, the building which became a landmark in Addis Ababa. In 1963 he helped establish the Institute for Banking Studies to provide specialized in-house courses on banking following the model of the London Institute of Bankers. The operation banking legislation had been drafted under his chairmanship.By 1974, the bank had grown to a total of 100 branches and was internationally recognized as the leading financial institution in the country.
Taffara was born on June 15 1926 in Abomse, near Ankober, where his father owned a modest farm with a few cattle and sheep. At the tender age of seven, Taffara was brought to Addis Ababa to start his schooling, a city which, as he recalled, fascinated him by the sights, “big flat and smooth roads on which I saw black objects with wheels rolling on, and well-dressed people riding on mules and other people coming and going.” Staying with his aunt for some time, he was entrusted to the cares of a lone priest who lived in Gulele. His memory of his stay with the priest was ‘dreary and I was hungry and cold most of the time’, he wrote in his memoir. But luckily that didn’t last long and in 1934, he was enrolled in Alliance Francaise and thus began the first step towards a western education, leaving “the world of the priest’s idea of teaching monotonously repeated Amharic for an exciting world of French schooling”. He apparently did satisfactory work but due to the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1936 his studies were interrupted after two years. The Alliance Francaise was closed and his schooling had come to an abrupt end. During the five years of the Italian occupation, he lived in the Ddrosdovsky-Dabbert household which was located in central Addis Ababa beside the Tewdros Square running errands and playing with their son, Olik.Major General Drosdovsky was a Russian immigrant and his daughter Madame Alexandra was a renowned dentist who opened her own practice in Addis Ababa. With the family he learned Russian and Italy and read many books.“The influence of early books is profound. So much of the future is found in books,” he said.
After the liberation of the country and the return of Emperor Haile Selassie, Mme Alexandara Dabbert, her son Olik, were included among the list of ‘enemy’ civilian evacuees being sent to Italy by the order of the British Military Administration. Taffara found himself without shelter and his priority became finding a job.
Taffara began his first job as a filing clerk with the State Bank of Ethiopia on March 1, 1944, at the age of 18. He was put to the task of recording incoming and outgoing letters and maintaining the correspondence files. “I was first fascinated by my work as I could read all the letters to my heart’s content and learn the styles of business writing” he recalled. With the approval of the Emperor, in 1945, the Governor of the State Bank organized a program to send eleven young employees abroad for education and training and Taffara was selected as one of the trainees. As a first step, he and his companions were sent to the Haile Selassie I Secondary School in Kotobe to supplement their sketchy education. The enrollment at Kotobe High School was small and “one of the favorite schools that the Emperor visited frequently.” His contemporaries included Afewerk Tekle, Germame Niway, Ketema Yifru, Menasse Haile, Mengistu Lemma.
In 1946, Taffara was sent to Canada in a government scholarship and he joined the Garbutt Business College in Calgary, living in up the hill near Center Street, which was then known as Crescents Heights. He attended secretarial and accounting courses at the college. As Taffara explained in his memoir Minutes of an Ethiopian Century (2006), he found his student life quite pleasant. As he recalls, “I participated in all student activities. I went regularly to church with my landlady and her brothers. I found Canadians, no matter how irreligious they may be, appreciated the value of having a church. The Calgary of the 1940s was a relatively small and peaceful community and there were many churches.”
Upon his graduation from the Garbutt Business College with a diploma, he joined the University of British Columbia and managed to receive his bachelor of commerce degree in three years, “no mean achievement, especially for one who had had such a scanty formal education at high school level”.
He applied himself to law at both UBC and at the University Of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor before returning to the State Bank of Ethiopia as an attorney in 1952. He maintained his study and in 1955 he took his diploma in law from University College of Addis Ababa.
During the revolutionary upheavals in Ethiopia of 1974, Taffara was appointed Governor of the National Bank. He was one of the individuals directed by the Derg to see the ex-Emperor and to clarify the position of the foreign bank account with him. The Emperor, who with a slight smile asks Taffara if “he too is going to bother him,” which embarrassed Teffara. “I immediately bowed and murmured that I was only trying to help clear up the matter,” he wrote.
On November 24, 1974, thethe military government stunned the country and the world with the radio announcement that 60 former ministers, officials, and military officers had been executed for alleged abuse of authority. Taffara heard the news on his way to meet friends at the Golf Club for the Sunday mountain walking group. “It was exactly 8 o’clock. As we approached the parking lot, we heard on the club’s radio the well-known war song “yefiyel wotete”, normally preceded Dergue announcement and executions.” He refused to believe the news he had just heard. “We cancelled our Sunday walk and returned home in dismay,” he recalled. As the tragic events later unfolded, this was only the beginning. During the difficult transition, Taffara was arrested and put under political detention for five years and seven months.He was detained, he was told later, for fear that he might constitute an impediment to the revolution. He was considered ‘a tripping stone’ that threatened to ‘trip’ it to fall; which became the title of his book, chronicling his prison days.
The New York Times of 29 February 1976 had commented that “The arrest of the governor of the national bank, Taffara Deguefé, came as a particular surprise. He was regarded highly by many diplomats and foreign businessmen as efficient and capable.”
A man of huge energy and charm, full of amusing stories and fluent in a number of languages, Taffara won the respect and love of many. He was president of the Ethiopian chamber of Commerce from 1968 to 1975, Honorary Consul General for the Kingdom of Norway, Honorary Treasurer of the Ethiopian Red Cross Society.
Taffara was full of ideas; he was passionately responsive to his time. Commenting on the fragile ‘patchwork collation’ which the current ruling power relies on to stay in power, he advocated a return to our historic past and building the future by reinforcing the gains made in previous decades. He writes that «looking back I am convinced that life under the imperial regime was far better than in the succeeding regimes. There was a steady growth with stability and respect for law and order. I feel strongly that Ethiopia has to overcome the political hurdle of ethnic divisiveness and build the future by consolidating the social and economic gains of the past.” He lamented about the current official tendency which he described us ‘derisive of our past and public heroes.” He emphatically stressed that the misinformation is leading the youth to lose faith in our national culture, to repudiate the past and cease to believe in progress.
Taffara has been the recipient of many awards and decorations including the medal of Grand Officer of the Order of Menelik, the Order of Merit of the French Republic, and the medal of Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit. In 1974, he was granted a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa by the University of British Columbia.
He married Laurie Paterson, in 1958; whom he had known since his university days in Canada. Their romance blossomed in the years she spent teaching in Ethiopia. They were married in Addis Ababa, had a son and a daughter.