Sidama Region, Ethiopia — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Sidama Region known for?

Sidama is one of Ethiopia's youngest regional states, carved out in 2020 after the Sidama people voted for their own home. Coffee is its calling card. The washed beans grown on the highland slopes above Hawassa carry the Sidamo name to buyers worldwide, ranked among the country's finest.

Hawassa itself sits on Lake Awasa, a fishing town turned regional capital in the Great Rift Valley. Away from the water, the land climbs into cool green highlands where the enset plant feeds nearly every household.

Where is Sidama Region?

Sidama fills a compact block of southern Ethiopia, second only to Harari as the country's smallest regional state. It wraps around the eastern and southern shores of Lake Awasa, an endorheic lake sunk in the floor of the Great Rift Valley where the land is warm and flat. From that valley floor near 1,700 metres the region climbs steeply eastward into cool highlands that top out above 3,000 metres.

The Bilate River draws the western edge. It separates Sidama from the Wolayita country beyond, and the Oromia Region presses in along the north, the east, and most of the south. That spread of altitude is the whole story of the place.

Coffee, enset, and khat cover the temperate middle belt, the warm valley grows what the lowlands grow, and the highest ground stays cold and green under mist. Lake Abaya lies just beyond the southern rim. Little of Sidama is far from a slope.

The rift and the ridge above it shape every field, road, and town in the region.

What is Sidama Region like?

The region takes its name from the Sidama people, who give the land its language and its year. Their new year is Fichee-Chambalaalla. Astrologers read the stars to fix its date, clans gather at the sacred ground of Gudumale in Hawassa, and families share buurisame, a dish pounded from the enset plant with milk and butter.

UNESCO added the festival to its list of the intangible heritage of humanity in 2015. The enset, the false banana, is more than festival food here; its fermented pulp is the daily bread of Sidama households, grown in the garden beside the house. Coffee threads through daily life just as deeply.

Beans picked on the slopes are roasted, ground, and brewed in the long ceremony that opens a Sidama welcome. Most people here are Protestant Christians, with Muslim, Orthodox, and Catholic neighbours among them. The Sidamo language belongs to the Cushitic family, spoken by millions across these hills.

Cattle still measure a family's standing. Village life turns on the garden plot, the coffee harvest, and the calendar the elders keep.

What is the history of Sidama Region?

The Sidama were drawn into the Ethiopian Empire under Menelik II late in the nineteenth century, most clans submitting without a fight. For a century afterward their country was folded into larger provinces, latterly the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region. Self-rule stayed a Sidama demand.

It came to a head in the referendum of 2019, when almost everyone who voted chose their own region. On 18 June 2020 the Sidama Region formally began, with Hawassa as its capital.

What is the climate of Sidama Region?

Altitude sets the weather here, not the season. Down on the rift floor around Lake Awasa the air stays warm the year round, while the highlands east of Hawassa run cool to cold under frequent mist. The temperate middle belt, where most of the coffee and enset grow, is mild and green with good rain through much of the year.

Rains come heaviest to the highest ground. It is the climb from lake to ridge, more than any calendar month, that decides whether you sweat or reach for a jacket in Sidama.

How do you get to Sidama Region?

Most travellers reach Sidama from Addis Ababa, the national capital to the north. The quick way is a short flight into Awasa Airport, under an hour in the air, then a brief drive to the lakeshore in Hawassa. The road is the alternative.

It runs south from Addis Ababa through the Rift Valley in a matter of hours, a paved and busy route that carries the region's coffee out the other way. From Hawassa, local roads climb to Wondo Genet and out to the coffee towns.