The African Enterprise team in Ethiopia was established in 1995 under Berhanu Deresse. Berhanu served as Team Leader until 2003 when Melisachew Mesfin took over this position. The Ethiopian Board Chairs over the last 15 years have been Million Belete (6 years), Hailu Woldesemaat (5 years), and Bishop Hiruy Tsigie (4 years).
In December of that first year a major mission took place in Addis Ababa. 300,000 people attended the final evangelistic meeting of the mission at a racecourse where Stephen Lungu was preaching. 5,000 people responded to the Gospel message and went forward for prayer. The local churches collected their names and addresses and pledged to visit these new converts with the aim of discipleship. This was one of African Enterprise’s largest ever meetings.
The Ethiopian team, besides its main calling of urban evangelism, has designed a youth focused Students Discipleship Programme (SDP), with the theme of “Building the Church of Tomorrow, Today”. The programme is for scholars from grade five upwards and includes university students. It is an age-graded curriculum based on seven rounds of training, and finds its basis in biblical discipleship. It is a spiritually empowering programme with a structured syllabus.
The Student Discipleship Programme started by enrolling less than 800 students in 9 cities in 2003. Today it reaches more than 20,000 students annually in over 100 cities.