Hawassa

Hawassa is a modern city on ancient ground. The Sidama have farmed the hills east of the lake for centuries, organised in clans under the gadaa-like system of generational grades and led by clan elders, with enset and coffee as the basis of a dense rural society. Sidama territory was brought into the Ethiopian empire in the 1890s, in the same wave of southern conquests that absorbed Kaffa and Wolaita, and northern landlords and administrators were settled on the land.

The town itself was laid out from the late 1950s as a planned settlement beside the lake, part of imperial efforts to develop the Rift Valley; a municipality was founded in 1962, and the grid of wide streets it was given still distinguishes it from older Ethiopian towns. It became the administrative seat of the surrounding province and then, after the 1995 constitution, the capital of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region, which gave it government offices, a university and a steady flow of investment.

Sidama campaigning for a region of its own intensified in the 2010s and was settled by a referendum in November 2019; the Sidama regional state was formally established in June 2020, with Hawassa as its capital. The city kept its administrative weight when the rest of the old southern region was divided in 2021 and 2023. An industrial park for textiles and garments, opened in 2016 on the edge of the city, drew tens of thousands of workers and made the city a centre of Ethiopia's export manufacturing, though it lost factories and jobs after Ethiopia was removed from the United States' duty-free AGOA scheme in 2022.

Hawassa is a Sidama city with a mixed population drawn from across the south and from the northern highlands. Sidaamu Afoo, a Cushitic language, is heard everywhere alongside Amharic, and Sidama identity is expressed most publicly at Fichee-Chambalaalla, the New Year fixed by clan astronomers, which is inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage list. Families prepare buursaame, a porridge of enset flour, milk and butter, share it with neighbours, and gather for songs, dances and the reconciliation of disputes.

Coffee is more than a crop here. Sidama is one of the great arabica origins, and the ceremony — green beans roasted over charcoal, pounded, brewed in a clay jebena and served in three rounds with incense and popcorn — is performed in homes, offices and cafés. Guests are expected to stay for all three rounds.

Protestant churches, very strong across southern Ethiopia, fill on Sundays with long services and choirs; Orthodox parishes keep the fasts and mark Meskel and Timkat; and a Muslim minority has mosques in the city. Life is lived outdoors more than in most Ethiopian cities: running and football on the lakeshore in the early morning, families walking under the fig trees at dusk, and a nightlife of azmari-style music, Ethio-jazz bands and bars that is unusually busy for a city of its size, supported by weekenders from Addis Ababa.

The 2007 census counted 157,879 people in Hawassa, one of the larger cities in southern Ethiopia, and it has grown quickly since through migration from the Sidama countryside and the arrival of industrial work. Employment is in government — regional, zonal and municipal offices — in Hawassa University and its hospital, in trade along the highway, in fishing and fish processing on the lake, in hotels and conference business, and in the industrial park, whose garment factories employ large numbers of young people, many of them women from rural districts, though their numbers fell after 2022.

Around the city the countryside is among the most densely settled in Ethiopia: smallholdings of enset, coffee, khat, maize and vegetables, with households depending on coffee prices that move with the world market. The lake supports a fishing cooperative economy, and its health — falling water quality, rising levels and pressure from the growing city — is a recurring public concern.

The day starts early at the fish landing and on the shore, where people run and walk before work. The middle of the day is for trade and offices; the late afternoon for coffee, football and the promenade. Rising rents, factory wages that have not kept pace with inflation, water and power interruptions, and the management of a young and fast-growing population are the issues that occupy the city.

Fish is what Hawassa is known for. Tilapia from the lake is filleted, battered and deep-fried as asa cutlet, grilled whole, or cooked into asa wat with berbere and onion; a raw fish dish, asa kitfo, is eaten by those who want it, and the fried fish sold at the landing, wrapped in paper with a wedge of lemon and a scatter of chilli, is the city's most characteristic meal. Because fish is permitted during Orthodox fasts, it is on tables all year.

Inland, the food is Sidama. Enset, the 'false banana', is fermented for weeks and baked as kocho, a dense flatbread, or made into the finer bulla; buursaame, the porridge of enset flour with milk and butter, belongs to Fichee and to occasions of welcome. Kitfo, minced beef warmed with spiced butter and mitmita, is eaten with kocho and ayib cheese. The national repertoire is everywhere as well: injera with shiro, lentils and greens, tibs, and the vegetarian beyaynetu platter on fasting days.

Coffee is the city's pride, grown in the hills above the lake and drunk several times a day, sometimes with a pinch of salt or butter in the countryside. Tella, the home-brewed barley beer flavoured with gesho, and tej, the honey wine, are the traditional drinks, while thick layered fruit juices of avocado, mango and papaya are the everyday alternative in the cafés along the shore.