This paper critically examines the goals, processes, resources, and effectiveness of Ethiopia's efforts to teach its people to read. Of the estimated 27 million people living in Ethiopia, only ten percent are literate. In recognition of this, and with the hypothesis that literacy skills are prerequisites for building a just and egalitarian society, governmental, private, religious, and commercial organizations are sponsoring literacy-skill learning within and without the formal primary schools. (UNESCO is one such organization and has instituted two programs for literacy skill learning.) Such efforts are hampered by a number of important political and cultural factors, including lack of incentive to become, and to remain, literate; the complexity of the language of instruction (Amharic); the diversity of other languages used by the population; the lack of appropriate instructional personnel, materials, equipment, and facilities; and the unsupportive social and economic environment. The report suggests that, in order to achieve the goal of creating a literate society within this century, ways and means must be found to overcome literacy-inhibiting factors by making use of available, evidently successful approaches. (Author/RL)