Gobena Ameni Foundation (GAF)
Gobena Ameni Foundation (GAF) has been established by Professor Gobena Ameni in 2019 for encouraging education, research and innovation in agriculture and biomedical sciences in Ethiopia. Gobena Ameni was born in 1972 at Mugar Village located at about seven km in the west direction of the Ambo Town in north direction the Ambo Mineral Water Factory. He completed his elementary and secondary education at Gudar and Ambo towns, and joined the Addis Ababa University (AAU) in 1990 for his undergraduate study. He has acquired DVM from the Addis Ababa University in 1996, Diploma of Imperial College (DIC) in Immunology and PhD in Clinical Microbiology in 2009 from the Imperial College, University of London, the United Kingdom. Dr Gobena Ameni was employed by the AAU in 1997 as an Assistant Lecture and has been promoted to a full Professor in May 2015 by the Addis Ababa University, where he served for 22 (1997-2019) years as a faculty member with a responsibility of teaching and supervising graduate and undergraduate student, and researching, capacity building and providing community services.
During his tenure at the AAU, Professor Gobena secured several international funds and he received several awards for his achievements in research on infectious diseases and veterinary public health. Presently, he is a Professor of Veterinary Infectious Diseases at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) and is one of the well-recognized members of the department of Veterinary Medicine. Professor Gobena supervised 198 students including 34 PhD students for their dissertation researches. He has made a significant contribution in physical capacity building at the Addis Ababa University and at the Armauer Hansen Research Institute, which include procurement of five field vehicles and several high-tech laboratory equipment. So far, Professor Gobena authored and co-authored 278 articles on peer-reviewed journals and obtained 9100 citations and an h-index of 50 in the Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Q3AzO0wAAAAJ&hl=en).
Professor Gobena mobilized one million Birr from his different awards and resources recovered from byproducts of his research projects to establish GAF. He directly transferred the money he received from the Aklilu Lemma Best researcher Award, The Tore Godal Research Award, The Addis Ababa University Research Award as well as from his personal income for generating fund for GAF. Furthermore, he has continuously saved the travel awards he has been obtaining from different funding agencies for generating fund for GAF. In addition to the first phase of fund mobilization, he transferred an additional one million Birr to the Foundation’s account from his personal account in 2024.
Professor Gobena Ameni decided to work with the Ambo University in the execution of the objective of GAF as he was born and raised at the Ambo District. Ambo University is located at Ambo town, which is located at 111 km west of Addis Ababa, the capital city. Ambo University was established in 1947 as School of Agriculture, the first agricultural school in Ethiopia and has passed through various development stages after which it has attained the status of University in 2009. Ambo University is growing and expanding and has vision to become one of the best universities in the country. In this regard, Professor Gobena is highly interested to contribute to growth of Ethiopia in general and that of the Ambo University in particular in education, research and innovation.
The Foundation was established as a non-political and non-religious local organization with a reference number of 4494 on October 09, 2019 in accordance with the Civil Society Organization Proclamation number 1113/2019. Professor Gobena has been aspired by the Aklilu Lemma Foundation and Dr Tore Godal Award in order to reach on the decision of establishing of the GAF. He hopes that the beneficiaries of the GAF would be motivated and aspired to establish similar foundations in their fields of specialty and support Ethiopians in education, research and innovation.