Ethiopian News Agency

The Ethiopian News Agency (Amharic: የኢትዮጵያ ዜና አገልግሎት Ye-Ityopya Zéna Agelgelot; IZA) is the official news agency of the Government of Ethiopia. It is the oldest news organization in Ethiopia.

IZA's inception dates back to 1942 as “Agence Direcsione”, under what used to be known as the Ministry of Pen (Tsehafi Tae'zaz, in Amharic). It may well be argued that IZA is the first national wire service in Africa in light of the fact that no indigenous service of the kind was found in any other country in the continent due to colonialism, wherein social, political and economic institutions were established by, and made to serve the interests of the colonial powers. IZA, however, was stagnating in 1947 for about six consecutive years due to budget cuts. Even in the following 10 years, that is from 1954 to 1963, no significant development was witnessed, except a few attempts at expanding the service locally.

Beginning in late 1963, Agence Direcsione began to make its presence felt among the public through newspapers and radio broadcasting and its name was changed to Ethiopian News Source. Now ENA has 38 branches across the country.