Saron Bekele (name changed upon request for safety) was a student at Addis Ababa University when she faced an encounter that altered her academic life. She is among numerous university students across the country who have stepped forward to share harrowing experiences of sexual harassment, extortion, and ‘sex-for-grades’ demands imposed by their own lecturers and department heads. “When one of my lecturers summoned me to his office one day, I believed I was walking into a routine discussion about my academic performance,” Saron recalled.
Instead, she found herself inside a dimly lit office where her lecturer chose to communicate solely through handwritten notes—messages he displayed to her before immediately tearing them to pieces. Saron had been summoned under the premise of resolving a grade dispute. Shortly after she entered, the lecturer locked the door behind her.
Don’t make any noise,” one of the initial notes read. What began as inappropriate commentary about his personal life quickly escalated into explicit sexual extortion. “He wrote that I looked beautiful and asked why we couldn’t have sex,” she said.
“I was frightened and couldn’t believe what I was reading.” Saron alleged the lecturer then placed a condom on the desk and held up a final message warning her that revealing what had transpired “would ruin your life.” Overwhelmed with fear, she burst into tears before finding a way to escape the room. “He tore up every piece of paper so there would be no evidence,” she said. “But the trauma he left behind could not be torn up like those notes.” Saron’s account is far from an isolated incident.
Across Ethiopia, a growing body of testimonies, legal analyses, and academic studies indicates that sexual harassment and the coercive abuse of academic authority remain widespread—and overwhelmingly unchecked—within higher education institutions. Hundreds of kilometers from the capital, a former student at Madda Walabu University, Bale Robe Campus described a strikingly similar pattern. After being repeatedly informed that her marks were slipping, she was instructed to visit her lecturer’s office.
“After discussing my grades, he stood up, walked to the door, and locked it,” she recalled. I asked him what he was doing, but he ordered me to be quiet.” She alleged the lecturer attempted to sexually a…
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