Meaza Ashenafi became the first woman to lead Ethiopia's Federal Supreme Court in November 2018, promising to rebuild public trust in a judiciary long seen as politically controlled.
Meaza Ashenafi in November 2018 (Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia / Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
Parliament approved her appointment on November 1, 2018, as part of a wave of reforms that also brought Birtukan Mideksa to the head of the national election board. Voice of America profiled Meaza in July 2019 as she worked to restore confidence in the courts.
Meaza was already one of Ethiopia's best-known lawyers. In 1995 she founded the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association, which provided legal aid to women and campaigned for changes to family and criminal law. Her work on a landmark case about the abduction of a girl for forced marriage inspired the 2014 film Difret.
She was also a founder of Enat Bank, an Ethiopian bank set up with a focus on women, and later worked for the UN Economic Commission for Africa.
Her term as Supreme Court president ended in early 2023, when parliament approved a successor.
Sources: VOA News, Wikipedia: Meaza Ashenafi