For decades, the global business community harbored a persistent stereotype about African state-owned enterprises. The prevailing narrative suggested that these entities were destined to be inherently inefficient, uncompetitive, and ultimately unsuccessful on the world stage.
Tewolde Gebremariam, the former Chief Executive Officer of Ethiopian Airlines, dedicated his career to shattering that myth. Under his visionary leadership, Ethiopian Airlines was transformed from a modest regional player into a highly profitable aviation giant. Through relentless innovation, it became the largest aviation group in Africa and a universally respected global competitor.
Now bringing his expertise to the United States as a Senior Strategic Advisor for Delta Air Lines, Gebremariam recently sat down with Elias Taye, Editor-in-Chief of Amjambo Africa.
When Gebremariam officially took the helm of Ethiopian Airlines, the African aviation landscape looked vastly different. In 2010 and 2011, formidable regional competitors like Kenya Airways and South African Airways firmly dominated the skies, while Ethiopian Airlines sat further down the ranks. Yet, while those other legacy carriers faltered over the subsequent decade, Ethiopian Airlines experienced an unprecedented period of growth that defied industry expectations.
The bedrock foundation of this historic corporate transformation, Gebremariam explains, was a fundamental cultural mindset deeply rooted in the Ethiopian spirit.
“The first driving force for what we have achieved was can-do attitude,” Gebremariam noted with clear conviction. “In Amharic we say Yichalal. So the can-do attitude is the starting point for everything, because if you believe in something and if you believe it can be done, then passion follows and then passion brings energy.”
This extraordinary energy materialized early on in the form of Vision 2010, an aggressive strategy that successfully grew the airline’s annual revenue to a milestone $1 billion. Spurred by this initial success, Gebremariam and his executive team devised Vision 2025, an audacious fifteen-year strategic roadmap that completely defied Western corporate norms.
When Ethiopian Airlines introduced Vision 2025, it was met with significant skepticism. Gebremariam and his team were intentionally planning fifteen years into the future. In today’s highly volatile business environment, it is incredibly difficult for massive companies to effectively plan for a single year, aviation experts say. Western companies are frequently managed quarter by quarter, simply because they are strictly required to provide immediate numbers for Wall Street.
“Contrary to that, we followed the Chinese model because the Chinese believe in long-term planning,” Gebremariam explained.
He recognized that the two major aircraft under development at the time, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350, were game-changers that would take roughly ten years to fully develop. Therefore, planning in decade-long increments was an absolute necessity.
Furthermore, the airline adamantly refused to limit its target market to just Ethiopia or Africa. By strategically drawing a ten-hour flight radius from Addis Ababa, they identified a massive catchment area encompassing six billion people across high-growth regions like China, India, the Middle East, and South America.
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Despite initial accusations of wishful thinking from critics, the airline systematically hit all of its incredibly ambitious targets, and five years early. By 2020, total revenue had quintupled, and the fleet expanded from 33 aircraft to 133.
This meteoric corporate rise was not without profound, historically significant challenges. Gebremariam’s tenure was severely tested by two devastating crises: the tragic crash of a Boeing 737 MAX, and the unprecedented global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following the horrific crash of Flight 302 on a Sunday morning, an event that deeply shook the airline and the world, Gebremariam rapidly demonstrated decisive, absolutely uncompromising leadership. The crash was first reported globally by Amjambo Africa’s current Editor-in-Chief, Elias Taye, during his tenure as an Associated Press reporter in East Africa.
After flying via military helicopter to the devastated crash site in Bishoftu, Gebremariam immediately returned to his office and made a pivotal operational call. Before extensively consulting with international regulatory bodies, he independently grounded the remainder of Ethiopian Airlines’ Boeing 737 MAX fleet. Ethiopian Airlines emerged from the ensuing battle with its reputation for safety and professional crisis management completely intact.
Similarly, when the pandemic forcefully grounded commercial passenger fleets worldwide, Ethiopian Airlines was uniquely positioned to pivot, thanks to a highly criticized decision made years earlier. During the formulation of Vision 2025, Gebremariam had ordered 10 Boeing 777 dedicated freighters.
“When we ordered 10 Boeing 777 dedicated freighters the world said this is crazy, these guys are really going too fast and they will destroy themselves,” Gebremariam recalled. “But that was not the case because just fast forward COVID, during COVID disastrous crisis the only savior that we had in our hands was cargo, and it saved us.”
A common question about Ethiopian Airlines is exactly how a completely state-owned enterprise miraculously managed to thrive while nearly all its regional peers collapsed. Gebremariam frequently offers a masterful lesson in corporate governance, emphasizing that the ownership structure itself matters far less than operational independence.
For Gebremariam, state ownership is absolutely not the ultimate deciding factor in a company’s survival. He points out that Kenya Airways was a private entity but still structurally failed, while Ethiopian Airlines remained staunchly state-owned and wildly succeeded. The true secret lies in a strict, uncompromising separation of powers.
“African governments need to discipline themselves,” he declared firmly. “Because the airline business is a low margin business, and the profit is very low even in good times, so if you make small errors then it’s devastating.”
Successive Ethiopian governments clearly understood this, consistently allowing aviation professionals to independently manage the massive airline without any disruptive political interference.
Perhaps one of Gebremariam’s most enduring and socially impactful legacies is his highly aggressive investment in African human capital. Around 2010, Ethiopian Airlines faced a crippling personnel shortage, hemorrhaging highly trained pilots and highly skilled technicians who favored lucrative financial offers from wealthy Gulf carriers.
Instead of bitterly accepting defeat, Gebremariam viewed the crisis as a massive structural opportunity.
“I would call it, this is poverty in the midst of plenty,” he reflected. Realizing the profound absurdity of facing severe manpower shortages in a vast nation of over 100 million people back then, he noted the reality of modern global labor. “You cannot stop people from going to a better place.”
The only sustainable solution was to aggressively produce world-class aviation talent, internally. Ethiopian Airlines built the largest aviation academy in all of Africa, tapping into a pool of thousands of eager young university graduates desperately seeking reliable employment. When Gebremariam initially started as CEO, the airline had merely 300 pilots. By the time he retired, that number had swelled to 1,200.
After taking an early retirement in March 2022, Gebremariam relocated with his family to the United States. He frequently refers to the U.S. as a comfortable second home, having previously served as Ethiopian Airlines’ representative in New York City. However, his quiet retirement was remarkably brief. His unparalleled expertise quickly caught the attention of Delta Air Lines, who brought him on board as a Senior Strategic Advisor.
Today, Gebremariam is instrumental in shaping Delta’s broad international expansion, specifically focusing on Africa, the highly competitive Middle East, populous India, and global cargo operations. He optimistically views Africa not merely as a lovely heritage connection, but as the premier economic growth market of the 21st century.
“I would say this century is an African century, because you know the world is looking for natural resources, especially about the rare earth materials, the minerals which are now born of contention between the U.S. and China, they are abundantly located in Africa,” he explained.
For the dedicated readers of Amjambo Africa, particularly young African immigrants and diaspora professionals attempting to successfully navigate complex foreign corporate ladders, Gebremariam offers candid advice.
“When professionals actively live and work in the modern United States today, they are no longer just casually competing with their immediate local neighbors. They are aggressively competing with highly educated individuals in South Korea, Japan, mainland China, and across Europe. Diaspora professionals must solemnly commit to meticulously improving themselves every single day, approaching even the absolute smallest mundane tasks with maximum effort,” he stressed.
As a loving father of five intelligent children, three of whom are currently rigorously studying at rigorous colleges, it is wise counsel he consistently shares at his own dinner table.
