Negasso Gidada
ነጋሶ ጊዳዳ
President of Ethiopia
In office 22 August 1995 – 8 October 2001
Prime Minister	Meles Zenawi
Preceded by	Meles Zenawi (Acting)
Succeeded by	Girma Wolde-Giorgis
Minister of Labor and Social Affairs
In office 1990–1991
Minister of Communication
In office 1992–2019
Member of 1994 Ethiopian Constituent Assembly election
1995 Constitution of Ethiopia (Acting)
In office 5 June 1994 – December 1994
Advisory of Kunuz College
In office 2002–2019
Member of the House of Peoples' Representatives for Dembidolo
In office 2005–2008
Founding Member of Medrek
In office July 2008 – 27 April 2019
Member, Deputy Chairperson and Head of Foreign Affairs of the Unity for Democracy and Justice
In office 15 December 2009 – 27 April 2019
Personal details
Born	Negasso Gidada Solon (1943-09-08)8 September 1943 Dembidolo, Illubabor Province, Ethiopian Empire (now Oromia Region, Ethiopia)
Died	27 April 2019(2019-04-27) (aged 75) Frankfurt,[citation needed] Germany
Resting place	Petros Paulos Evangelic Church, Ethiopia 9°03′21″N 38°42′50″E / 9.055757°N 38.71399°E / 9.055757; 38.71399
Political party	EPRDF (until 22 June 2001) Independent (2005–2008) Unity for Democracy and Justice under Coalition of Medrek (2009–2019)
Spouse	Regina Abelt ​ (m. 1985)​
Children	Ibsa Negasso Telile Negasso
Parents	Gidada Solon (father) Dinse Sholi (mother)

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Negasso Gidada Solon (Ge'ez: ነጋሶ ጊዳዳ; 8 September 1943^[1] – 27 April 2019) was an Ethiopian politician who was the president of Ethiopia from 1995 until 2001.

Biography

Negasso was the son of Gidada Solon, one of the first local ministers of a Protestant church in the Dembidolo area in western Ethiopia.

Negasso held a doctorate in social history from the Goethe University Frankfurt and was a part-time lecturer of history at Addis Ababa University. The title of his doctoral thesis was "History of the Sayyoo Oromo of Southwestern Wallaga, Ethiopia, from about 1730 to 1886". He was married to Regina Abelt, a German nurse and midwife. Being the First Lady of Ethiopia while holding the German Citizenship earned Abelt considerable, yet unwanted, attention by the German and European tabloid press. In marked contrast, Regina Abelt was virtually invisible in Ethiopia and never enjoyed the official title of First Lady which was instead used by the wife of the Prime Minister.

Negasso died in Germany on 27 April 2019, after battling health issues.^[2]

Political career

In Europe, he was an active member of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).^[3] Negasso had been Minister of Information in the Transitional Government of Ethiopia and Central Committee member of the Oromo People's Democratic Organisation (OPDO) when he became president on 22 August 1995.^[4] He left office when his term expired on 8 October 2001. Before the end of his term, he was expelled from both the OPDO and the EPRDF coalition on 22 June.^[5]

In the 2005 general elections, Negasso was elected to the Ethiopian House of People's Representatives as an independent from Dembidolo in the Mirab Welega Zone of the Oromia Region.

In July 2008, Negasso became a founding member of the Forum for Democratic Dialogue (FDD), a new coalition of opposition parties and activists.^[6] Then in November 2009, he announced he had joined the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (UDJ), one of the eight parties in the FDD, "to try to unite Ethiopia".^[7] At the time of his announcement, he also asked forgiveness from Ethiopians for deceiving them that Ethiopia's current constitution was ratified in 1995 with full participation of all political parties in a democratic manner. "There were a number of political parties that were excluded from the process," he said during the ceremony when he and Siye Abraha were officially inducted into the UDJ.^[8]