Conference sponsors are Ethiopian students from Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley and San Jose State University and community-based organizations (World Affairs Council, Citizens League of Ethiopian-Americans, Silicon Valley Ethiopian Discussion Forum and the Ethiopian American Advocacy Group.) The conference will showcase scholars and activists working to address the issues Ethiopia faces at the dawn of the 21st Century. Dorothy Fadiman, Emmy award winning film-maker will present her documentary film, Breaking the Silence: Lifting the Stigma About HIV and AIDS in Ethiopia. Ric Haas, former Peace Corps Volunteer to Ethiopia, co-founder of the American Foundation for the Prevention of Child Birth Injuries, speaks on work at the Fitsula Hospital in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.

Known at the turn of the last century as Abyssinia, Ethiopia was the only black African nation to fend off European colonialism. In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt and Emperor Menelik the II, ruling monarch, established a commercial treaty between the United States and Ethiopia.

Forging of these relations was all the more historic as the US had virtually no relations with the continent at the time. With the exception of Liberia, founded in 1847 by freed American slaves, no other black African country was on the U.S. diplomatic radar. In this sense, Ethiopia was the first black African country that the United States ever befriended.

During the long reign of Emperor Haile Selassie I, Ethiopia accounted for half of all U.S. military and development assistance to Black Africa and often hosted the largest detachment of Peace Corps volunteers on the continent. Even during the seventeen year reign of the now-deposed Marxist junta of Mengistu Haile Mariam, Ethiopia was the beneficiary of the largest disbursement of humanitarian aid extended by the US to Africa. The Great Famine of 1984-5, which threatened a fifth of the country’s population, was forestalled by massive private and government assistance from the United States. Thousands of young Ethiopian refugees were granted asylum here. Following the collapse of the eastern bloc in the late 1980s, the United States brokered the transition to the current regime and has remained Ethiopia's closest and most influential western ally since.

Ethiopian immigrants in the US, numbering about half a million, make up one of the largest and most enterprising groups of African immigrants. The Bay Area hosts a large and highly educated Ethiopian community.

The two-day conference is free and open to the public.