Mendi, Ethiopia

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Mendi is a town in western Ethiopia. Located in the Mirab Welega Zone of the Oromia Region, this town has a latitude and longitude of 9°48′N, 35°6′E and an elevation of 1538 meters above sea level. It is the administrative center of Mana Sibu woreda.

Mendi hosts an airport (ICAO HAMN, IATA NDM), with an unpaved runway 1250 meters in length.^[1]

Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Mendi has an estimated total population of 18,020 of whom 9,199 were males and 8,821 were females.^[2] The 1994 census reported this town had a total population of 10,070 of whom 4,989 were males and 5,081 were females.

[edit] History

Dejazmach Gebre Egziabher constructed a church in Mendi in 1893.^[1] However, when the Dejazmach regained his rights to levy taxes over his father's former kingdom in 1907, the central government excepted the "gate" of Mendi, which was retained to the customs office in Nekemte. "This sealed the right of the centre to fiscal control over Nekemte, a right that Addis Abeba was never to abandon in the years to come."^[3]

By the 1930s, Mendi had become an important market of coffee. It attracted the attention of a Swedish pastor who established a mission there. The missionaries were accused of wrong-doing by the local Ethiopian priest to the Italians in 1938, who eventually expelled them; the Swedish mission was not revived until 1946. Mendi hosted a conference of Ethiopian Evangelical Churches in January 1954; the mission had to confront Muslim missionaries from Sudan in the next year, who converted 1000 people in a neighboring locale.^[1]

[edit] Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c} "Local History in Ethiopia" (pdf) The Nordic Africa Institute website (accessed 20 November 2007)
2. ^ CSA 2005 National Statistics, Table B.4
3. ^ Donald L. Donham and Wendy James (ed.), The Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia (Oxford: James Currey, 2002), p. 63