Upon returning to Ethiopia, he devoted himself to managing and developing the Ethiopian National Theater – which institution staged an impressive memorial for its former director.

In 1966, at the age of only 29, he was awarded his country's highest literary honour, the Haile Selassie I Prize for Amharic Literature, joining the ranks of such distinguished previous recipients as Kebede Michael.

Following the Ethiopian revolution of 1974, Gabre-Medhin was appointed for a short time as vice-minister of culture and sports, and was active in setting up Addis Ababa University department of Theatre Arts.

It traced Ethiopian history from the prehistoric time of Lucy, the first-known hominid that had recently been found in the Afar Desert in eastern Ethiopia.

Although unable to return to his native land, which lacked the dialysis facilities on which his life depended, he remained in close contact with the Ethiopian diaspora.

He was buried in Addis Ababa at Holy Trinity Cathedral church, where the body of Emperor Haile Selassie lies.

Considered a pioneer reformer and moderniser, the emperor committed suicide in 1868 rather than fall into the hands of a hostile British expeditionary force.

A third play, The Oda Oak Oracle, a tragedy about Ethiopian country life, also enjoyed great popularity, both in Ethiopia and abroad.

Another poem, in Amharic, castigated the European nomenclature for the waterfalls of Sudan and Egypt – which totally ignored those of Ethiopia, and caused Gabre-Medhin proudly to refer to the Tis Abay, or Blue Nile Falls, as the "Zero Cataract".