After studying documentary at Harvard, Habte received the George Peabody Gardner Traveling Fellowship to work as a video and radio facilitator with Aboriginal people in the remote communities of the Australian outback. In 2014, he was awarded the Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Traveling Fellowship to Ethiopia, where shot his first feature documentary, Shadow of His Wings. He is a 2017 Film Independent, TFI Network, and IFP Fellow.