Sidama people

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The Sidama (Ethiopic: ሲዳማ) people of southern Ethiopia are an ethnic group whose homeland is in the Sidama Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region of Ethiopia. They number above 3 million, the sixth populous nation in Ethiopia. ^[1]

Their language is called Sidaamu-afoo. Majority of the Sidama people have native African religion; less than half of them are born-again Christians since 1960s when European missionaries came to their regions; very few are Ethiopian Orthodox religion followers and fraction of the population are also Muslim; (S. Y. Hameso, Trevor Trueman, Temesgen M. Erena 1997).

The Sidama preserved its ways of lives, essence of cultural heritage including their own religion and 'language' (which is the case at present time)until as recently as late 1880s when they partially lost some of them since the conquest by Oromo kingdoms first and later by the reign of Abyssinian king Menelek II, (S.Y. Hameso, Trevor Trueman, Temesgen M Erena, 1997). Before this, the Sidama had its own well established administrative systems that predate 8th-10th century. Though it was made up of a loose coalition of kingdoms of Sidama people. As a result of marginalistion and since it does not have its own alphabets, very few has been written on Sidama issues as some not able to attend school until as recently as 1972 (after the socialist military regime overthrew brutally oppressive Emperor's regime). Then some of the Sidama people started to send their children to school for the first time during the last three decades.

At the moment, the Sidama is one of the regions of the country with small amount of schools, inadequate health services though primary education has increased recently.^[2] Some Sidama politicians have complained that Sidama doesn't have regional autonomy in the country and asked for the government to give Sidama people their own region or province. However, with the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region being a condensed region with the most number of ethnicities concentrated in a small territory, carving out boundaries with lines (that mainly never existed and are often violently disputed between each ethnicities) in order to give autonomy to the more than 40 ethnicities has become virtually impossible.

Historically, there were Sidama kingdoms in the Gibe region for which the native Sidama people don't give any evidence. Nearly 95% of the Sidama live a life centered around agriculture. An important staple food is the wesse plant, or Ensete. Other crops are also grown and they breed cattle. An important source of income is coffee. An economic importance of the Sidama, coffee is immense and it contributes a high percentage of export coffee for the central government, only second to the Oromia region. The Sidama farmers were affected by hunger caused by sinking world market prices for coffee, despite supplying the popular coffee chain Starbuck's with the majority of their coffee products from the region.(coffee crisis according to the pretext of Central the government)^[3].