About the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration

In 2003 Ethiopia had nine foreign trained psychiatrists for a population of 77 million people. There existed no option to train psychiatrists locally and sending trainees abroad resulted in the expatriation of hundreds of Ethiopian physicians.  It was a collaboration between the University of Addis Ababa and the University of Toronto (Toronto Addis Ababa Psychiatric Program) that changed this.  Today Ethiopia has 30 practicing psychiatrists and a thriving psychiatric residency program. This success formed the foundation of the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC).  TAAAC will continue to work with the Department of Psychiatry but has now expanded to over a dozen programs from Library Science to Surgery to Engineering. Providing local training opportunities to Ethiopia’s most ambitious minds TAAAC will give Ethiopians a chance to take on Ethiopia’s biggest challenges.