Waello

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Map of the provinces of Ethiopia

Wällo or Wollo ( Amharic ወሎ wällo ) is a historic province in northeast Ethiopia .

Their capital was Dese (Dessie). The west of the former provincial area belongs to the highlands of Abyssinia , while the east is part of the Afar lowlands . Because of their location in the rain shadow of the highlands, the north and east of Wällo belong to the areas of Ethiopia that are generally less rainy and more threatened by drought.

In the empire of Abyssinia

The province was named after the Wällo- Oromo ( Rayya , Yejju , Wällo, Dumuga) who settled here since the 17th century. After the end of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1941, the provinces of Amhara Saynt , Lasta , Wag and Yejju were annexed to Wällo. After the Woyane Rebellion in the northern neighboring province of Tigray in 1943, the Rayya and Azabo territories were also separated from Tigray and added to Wällo.

Drought, the social and economic conditions in the province and the indifference of the Ethiopian state under Haile Selassie led to famine in 1972–1973 / 74, in which between 40,000 and 80,000 people died. The Afar nomads who had lost land to cotton plantations, the Rayya and Azabo, who had been expropriated after the Woyane, and tenants who continued to pay their landlords were particularly hard hit .

In the People's Republic of Ethiopia

The north of Wollo and the south of Tigray were hardest hit by the 1983–1985 famine . The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) rebels were active in these areas , and the counterinsurgency activities of the Derg regime contributed more to hunger than the drought.

In 1987, the administrative structure of Ethiopia was reorganized and Wollo was divided into two provinces, North and South Wollo, the eastern part of the province became part of the autonomous region of Assab .

With the ethnic-federal reorganization after 1991, the western part of the provincial area belonging to the highlands was assigned to the Amhara region , while the eastern part now belongs to the Afar region . The Rayya and Azabo areas belong again to Tigray . The name Wollo lives on in the names of the zones Semien Wollo and Debub Wollo (North and South Wollo) in the Amhara region.

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  1. ↑ Thomas Zitelmann: Nation of the Oromo. Collective identities, national conflicts, we-group formation , 1994, ISBN 978-3-86093-036-6 (p. 40)
  2. ↑ List of provinces according to the map in Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia , London 1991, p. 86.
  3. ↑ a b c Alex de Waal, Africa Watch: Evil Days. 30 Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia , 1991 (pp. 30, 56-60, 131, 136-138)